|
Andrea Graus
> Automatic Writing in France 1857-1930
Andrea Graus
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
SCIENCE STUDIES October 16, 2013 -
Image: “The Muse of Automatic Writing,”
1924 edition of La Révolution surréaliste.
A review of Scripting the Mind: Automatic Writing in France,
1857-1930, by Alexandra Katerina Bacopoulos-Viau.
This excellent dissertation by Alexandra Bacopoulos-Viau
explores automatic writing in the French scientific, cultural and
social context between 1857 and 1930. Bacopoulos-Viau argues that
this technique played a significant role in producing knowledge
about the mind during the period preceding and concurrent with the
Freudian revolution. Moreover, she points out that automatic-writing
scripters “challenged the ideal of scientific objectivity
which emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century”
(p. 2). According to her, this challenge
was resolved with the “metaphorical transformation”
of these scripters — mediums, experimental subjects and surrealist
poets — into “technological tools:” “writing
machines” (p. 2). However: “Whereas
the medium and the psychological subject had been metaphorically
turned into machines by others, Surrealists willfully metamorphosed
themselves into recording instruments” (p.
8, italics in the original).
Automatic writing is a topic that had not been studied in depth
until now, especially from the perspective of history of science.
Consequently, Bacopoulos-Viau argues that “the originality
of this dissertation [...] resides as much in its subject matter
(automatic writing) as in its investigative approach (the history
of science)” (p. 18). Another
original element of her work stems from her analysis of the scripters’
role, as both scientific subjects and objects, from a gender perspective.
Rather than focusing on other forms of “automatic” manifestations,
Bacopoulos-Viau preferred to focus exclusively on writing. In contrast
to, for example, “automatic drawing,” automatic texts
were quickly considered scientific proofs due to their linguistic
nature, which favored its analysis and interpretation. Therefore,
“automatic texts became vehicles through which a new form
of knowledge about an unknown Other (whether external or internal)
was scientifically legitimized and validated” (p.
2).
The dissertation is structured in five chapters that follow
a chronological narrative.
In general terms, Bacopoulos-Viau starts describing mediumnistic
writing within Allan Kardec’s (1804-1869) Spiritist project
in the 1860s (Chapter 1). She continues showing the appropriation
of this kind of writing by scientists (especially psychologists),
the emergence of “new scripters” and the experimental
subjects, and the role of psychical research in the understanding
of the mind (Chapters 2 and 3). Finally, she ends by narrating the
artistic rediscovery of automatic writing by Surrealists poets,
and examines the use of this technique in 1920s Paris literary circles
(Chapters 4 and 5).
A crucial point in her dissertation is the distinction that she
makes between “subconscious” and “unconscious.”
In her thesis, Bacopoulos-Viau uses the expression “the discovery
of the subconscious” (p. 22)
to describe a new way of conceptualizing the mind that appeared
in France prior and concurrent with the Freudian revolution. As
she points out, in using this expression she is referring to Henri
Ellenberger’s classic The Discovery of the Unconscious
(New York: Basic Books, 1970). As she
argues, “the discovery of the subconscious” had its
origins in an original approach to psychopathology brought forth
by French physicians and psychologists, especially Pierre Janet
(1859-1947). With his notion of the subconscious, Janet interpreted
automatic texts as scientific evidences of psychopathology. As Bacopoulos-Viau
shows, this interpretation did not suit the aspirations of Surrealists
poets such as André Breton (1896-1966). Finally, Surrealists
associated automatism with creativity, which provoked a “shift
from a (psychopathological) ‘subconscious’
at the fin de siècle to a (potentially creative)
‘unconscious’ in the early twentieth century”
(p. 14, italics in the original). With
this argument in mind, the dissertation’s chapters are summarized
below.
The first chapter (“Enter the mediums,” pp. 25-49) deals
with the arrival of mediumnistic writing and the foundation of Allan
Kardec’s Spiritism in France. Bacopoulos-Viau analyses this
issue focusing on Kardec’s early works and the Revue spirite
(journal of the Société Parisienne des Etudes
Spirites) from 1858 until Kardec’s death in 1869. She
describes Kardec’s attempt to present the spiritist movement
as “scientific.” Séances were understood as “experimental
Spiritism” and the spiritist doctrine was said to be rooted
in Comtean Positivism.
Kardec defended that “mediumistic texts could be used to legitimize
and validate knowledge about the Other World” (p.
37). These texts matched perfectly his positivistic endeavors,
and so, they quickly took on the status of scientific evidence in
spiritist circles. Accordingly, Kardec endowed mediumistic writing
“with a special epistemological status by making it a privileged
means of accessing the otherworldly message” (p.
49). In that way, writing mediums took on a prominent role.
As Bacopoulos-Viau shows, Kardec saw mediums as “instruments”
to access the Other World. This issue is analyzed from a gender
perspective: “My argument is that male mediums were better
suited to Kardec’s positivistic endeavor. Indeed, one can
imagine that men’s association with rationality bolstered
their status as scientific instruments and, as such, that Kardec
would have seen this as a way to increase the legitimacy of this
nascent movement” (p. 48).
The second chapter (“Subconscious scripts,”
pp. 50-70) investigates the passage of mediumnistic writing
to automatic writing. Bacopoulos-Viau describes this process as:
“the appropriation of mediumnistic writing by scientists for
the creation of a new autonomous discipline of psychology at the
opening of the Third Republic” (p. 23).
New scripters (the hypnotized subjects or somnambulists) and sites
(the clinic and the laboratory) come into scene. The chapter examines
the use of automatic writing in the works of experimental psychologists
such as Frederic W. H. Myers (1843-1901), Edmund Gurney (1847-1888),
Alfred Binet (1857-1911), and especially Pierre Janet.
As Bacopoulos-Viau argues, Janet had a prominent role in the making
of a specifically French way of conceptualizing the mind (“the
discovery of the subconscious”). To distance himself from
Spiritism and mediumistic writing, Janet pathologized automatism.
In contrast with writing mediums, experimental subjects began to
be considered as the authors of the automatic texts. But, as Bacopoulos-Viau
points out: “In becoming authors, automatic writing subjects
in fin-de-siècle experimental psychology thus also
became sick, abnormal, and pathologized” (p.
70).
The third chapter (“Subliminal fictions,”
pp. 71-97) deals with the alliances between scientists and
séances at the turn of the twentieth century, especially
focusing on the case study of the medium Hélène Smith
(1861-1929) and the Swiss psychologist Théodore Flournoy
(1854-1920). Bacopoulos-Viau starts narrating the institutionalization
of psychical research in France, which began with the establishment
of Charles Richet and Xavier Dariex’s Annales des Sciences
Psychiques in 1891.
In her analysis of the aforementioned case study, Bacopoulos-Viau
shows the confrontation of two broad models of the mind at the turn
of the twentieth century. In general terms, the first one “saw
in the most elementary forms of human consciousness a reservoir
of potential capacities, possibly even supernormal” (p.
94). As she points out, this view was characterized by Myers’
“subliminal self,” which was appropriated by Flournoy
in his works on Hélène Smith. The second conception
“dealt with ‘psychological automatism’ and disintegration;
it dealt with the enfeebled mind and psychological weakness”
(p. 94). That was Janet’s concept
of the subconscious, which became paradigmatic in the French medico-psychological
discourse until the First World War. Bacopoulos-Viau associates
the first model with psychical research. In her words, “psychical
research enabled the transition from ‘subconscious scripts’
to a ‘poetics of the unconscious’” (p.
24), a subject that she also investigates in the following
chapters.
The fourth chapter (“Surrealist transcriptions,”
pp. 98-124) deals with the “literary (re)discovery”
(p. 98) of automatic writing by a group
of poets that would be finally linked to Surrealism. The chapter
is especially centered on André Breton. Bacopoulos-Viau correctly
challenges two streams of scholarship regarding Breton: the first
is represented by Anna Balakian, who has highlighted the supposedly
decisive influence that Janet had on the poet; the second is represented
by Marguerite Bonnet, who denied the influence of psychical research
in Breton’s thought.
By examining his professional encounter with “madness”
in the psychiatric field, Bacopoulos-Viau shows Breton’s artistic
discovery of automatic writing. Also, by analyzing his intellectual
influences, she shows that the poet finally rejected Janet’s
model of “psychological automatism.” This rejection
was completed by Breton’s support to psychical research and
métapsychique. As Bacopoulos-Viau points out, in
the 1924 Manifesto, Surrealism was defined as “pure psychical
automatism” (p. 117, italics in the
original).
The fifth and last chapter (“Poetics
of the unconscious,” pp. 125-137) investigates automatic
writing within literary circles in 1920s Paris, and shows how these
Surrealists poets challenged some concepts like authorship. From
a gender perspective, Bacopoulos-Viau analyzes “the transformation
of the (generally female) medium/hysteric into the (exclusively
male) scripter of the unconscious” (p.
125). According to her, in appropriating automatic writing
from the clinical laboratory, Surrealist poets became at once “the
domineering physician and the submissive hysteric” (p.
135). Thus, “automatic writing can therefore be interpreted
as a quest for one’s feminine Other — as illustrated
in the Surrealist fascination for the Platonic ideal of the Androgyne”
(p. 136). As she points out, to represent
automatic writing Surrealists chose a picture of a nameless female
scripter, whom Breton and Eluard called “the muse of automatic
writing” (p. 139).
The dissertation ends in 1930. On the one hand, Surrealists became
more involved in pictorial art. On the other hand, the interest
in hypnotism, hysteria and automatism decreased in the medico-psychological
field.
In sum, this dissertation is an excellent contribution to the history
of automatic writing from a history of science perspective, and
it is highly recommended to different types of scholars, but especially
to historians of the human sciences. No doubt, publications based
on this dissertation would make a crucial contribution to our understanding
of automatic writing and its role in the making of the modern self.
Andrea Graus
Centre for the History of Science (CEHIC)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Primary Sources
Fonds André Breton, Bibliothèque littéraire
Jacques Doucet, Paris.
Catalogue Fonds Théodore Flournoy, Bibliothèque Publique
de Genève.
William James Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Dissertation Information
University of Cambridge. 2013. 159 pp. Primary Advisor:
John Forrester.
Fonte:
http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/5494
topo
|
