mes, _Princ. of
Psych._ i. chap. 5; also the articles PSYCHOLOGY, SUGGESTION, &c.

_Sensory Automatism_ is the term given by students of psychical research to
a centrally initiated hallucination. Such hallucinations are commonly
provoked by crystal-gazing (_q.v._), but auditory hallucinations may be
caused by the use of a shell (shell-hearing), and the other senses are
occasionally affected.

_Motor Automatism_, on the other hand, is a non-reflex movement of a
voluntary muscle, executed in the waking state but not controlled by the
ordinary waking consciousness. Phenomena of this kind play a large part in
primitive ceremonies of divination (_q.v._) and in our own day furnish much
of the material of Psychical Research. At the lowest level we have vague
movements of large groups of muscles, as in "bier-divination," where the
murderer or his residence is inferred from the actions of the bearers; of a
similar character but combined with more specialized action are many kinds
of witch seeking. These more specialized actions are most typically seen in
the Divining Rod (_q.v._; see also TABLE-TURNING), which indicates the
presence of water and is used among the uncivilized to trace criminals. At
a higher stage still we have the delicate movements necessary for Automatic
Writing (_q.v._) or Drawing. A parallel case to Automatic Writing is the
action of the speech centres, resulting in the production of all kinds of
utterances from trance speeches in the ordinary language of the speaker to
mere unintelligible babblings. An interesting form of speech automatism is
known as Glossolalia; in the typical case of Helene Smith, Th. Flournoy has
shown that these utterances may reach a higher plane and form a real
language, which is, however, based on one already known to the speaker.

See _Man_ (1904), No. 68; _Folklore_, xiii. 134; Myers in _Proc. S.P.R._
ix. 26, xii. 277, xv. 403; Flournoy, _Des Indes a la planete Mars_ and in
_Arch. de Psychologie_; Myers, _Human Personality_.

(N. W. T.)

AUTOMATON (from [Greek: autos], self, and [Greek: mao], to seize), a
self-moving machine, or one in which the principle of motion is contained
within the mechanism itself. According to this description, clocks, watches
and all machines of a similar kind, are automata, but the word is generally
applied to contrivances which simulate for a time the motions of animal
life. If the human figure and actions be represented, the automaton has
sometimes