The Collaborative International Dictionary
Automatism \Au*tom"a*tism\, n. The state or quality of being automatic; the power of self-moving; automatic, mechanical, or involuntary action. Specifically: (Metaph.) A theory as to the activity of matter.
Wiktionary
n. 1 Acting automatically or involuntarily. 2 (context psychology English) An action performed subconsciously, without any apparent direction from the mind; a thought which appears spontaneously in one's consciousness. 3 A surrealist painting technique whereby one attempts to move the brush, pen etc. without conscious control over it.
WordNet
n. any reaction that occurs automatically without conscious thought or reflection (especially the undirected behavior seen in psychomotor epilepsy)
Wikipedia
Automatism may refer to:
- Automatic behavior, spontaneous verbal or motor behavior; an act performed unconsciously. Defendants have been found not guilty due to an automatism defense (e.g., homicide while sleepwalking).
- Automatism (law), a defense to liability. See also Automatism (case law).
- Automatism (toxicology), when an individual repeatedly takes a medication because the individual forgets previous doses, potentially leading to a drug overdose.
- Automatic writing, the process, or product, of writing material that does not come from the conscious thoughts of the writer.
- Surrealist automatism, an art technique.
- Automatism (medicine), repetitive unconscious gestures such as lip smacking, chewing, or swallowing in certain types of epilepsy.
Automatism is a rarely used criminal defence. It is one of the mental condition defences that relate to the mental state of the defendant. Automatism can be seen variously as lack of voluntariness, lack of culpability (unconsciousness) or excuse (Schopp). Automatism means that the defendant was not aware of his or her actions when making the particular movements that constituted the illegal act. For example, Esther Griggs in 1858 threw her child out of a first floor window believing that the house was on fire, while having a night terror. Brian Thomas strangled his wife in their campervan in a more recent case in Aberporth in an episode of rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder (a disorder related to sleepwalking), where he dreamed there was an intruder on top of his wife. The defence of automatism is denying that the person was acting in the sense that the criminal law demands. As such it is really a denial-of-proof – the defendant is asserting that the offence is not made out. The prosecution does not have to disprove the defence as is sometimes erroneously reported; the prosecution has to prove all the elements of the offence including the voluntary act requirement. Automatism is a defence even against strict liability crimes like dangerous driving, where no intent is necessary.
Automatism, in toxicology, refers to a tendency to take a drug over and over again, forgetting each time that one has already taken the dose. This can lead to a cumulative overdose. A particular example is barbiturates which were once commonly used as hypnotic (sleep inducing) drugs. Among the current hypnotics, benzodiazepines, especially midazolam might show marked automatism, possibly through their intrinsic anterograde amnesia effect. Barbiturates are known to induce hyperalgesia, i.e. aggravation of pain and for sleeplessness due to pain, if barbiturates are used, more pain and more disorientation would follow leading to drug automation and finally a "pseudo"suicide. Such reports dominated the medical literature of 1960s and 1970s; a reason replacing the barbiturates with benzodiazepines when they became available.
In medicine, automatism refers to a set of brief unconscious behaviors. These typically last for several seconds to minutes or sometimes longer, a time during which the subject is unaware of his/her actions. This type of automatic behaviour often occurs in certain types of epilepsy, such as complex partial seizures in those with temporal lobe epilepsy, or as a side effect of certain medications, such as zolpidem.
Usage examples of "automatism".
Undoubtedly matter is there, under the forms of habit, threatening us with automatism, seeking at every moment to devour us, stealing a march on us whenever we forget.
The automatism which it claimed to be drawing towards liberty enfolds it and drags it down.
Myers has given the name of automatism, sensory or motor, emotional or intellectual, to this whole sphere of effects, due to 'uprushes' into the ordinary consciousness of energies originating in the subliminal parts of the mind.
Interpreting the unknown after the analogy of the known, it seems to me that hereafter, wherever we meet with a phenomenon of automatism, be it motor impulses, or obsessive idea, or unaccountable caprice, or delusion, or hallucination, we are bound first of all to make search whether it be not an explosion, into the fields of ordinary consciousness, of ideas elaborated outside of those fields in subliminal regions of the mind.
If, abstracting altogether from the question of their value for the future spiritual life of the individual, we take them on their psychological side exclusively, so many peculiarities in them remind us of what we find outside of conversion that we are tempted to class them along with other automatisms, and to suspect that what makes the difference between a sudden and a gradual convert is not necessarily the presence of divine miracle in the case of one and of something less divine in that of the other, but rather a simple psychological peculiarity, the fact, namely, that in the recipient of the more instantaneous grace we have one of those Subjects who are in possession of a large region in which mental work can go on subliminally, and from which invasive experiences, abruptly upsetting the equilibrium of the primary consciousness, may come.
Examining his subjects with reference to their hypnotic sensibility and to such automatisms as hypnagogic hallucinations, odd impulses, religious dreams about the time of their conversion, etc.
The lower manifestations of the Subliminal, indeed, fall within the resources of the personal subject: his ordinary sense-material, inattentively taken in and subconsciously remembered and combined, will account for all his usual automatisms.
Darwin’s theory that luck is the main element in survival, and how largely this theory is responsible for the fatuous developments in connection alike with protoplasm and automatism which a few years ago seemed about to carry everything before them.
Under the name of automatism it has been advocated by Professor Huxley, and with firmer logic by Professor Clifford.
You will in point of fact hardly find a religious leader of any kind in whose life there is no record of automatisms.
Motor automatisms, though rarer, are, if possible, even more convincing than sensations.
In it arise whatever mystical experiences we may have, and our automatisms, sensory or motor.
Graphic automatism of a fully developed kind is rare in religious history, so far as my knowledge goes.
It is different from imitation in this way, that it means a large degree of automatism.
Next, he must love that form, as a form, adoring it, understanding it, and mastering it, with most minute attention, until it (as it seems) adapts itself to him with eager elasticity, and answers accurately and aptly, with the unconscious automatism of an organ perfected by evolution, to his most subtlest suggestion, to his most giant gesture.