"Automatism" and the emergence of dynamic psychiatry

This article is about the clash of two explanatory paradigms, each attempting to account for the same data of human experience. In the first half of the nineteenth century, physiologists investigated reflex actions and applied a recently coined word, "automatism," to describe actions which, although seeming to arise from higher centers, actually result from automatic reaction to sensory stimuli. Experiments with spinal reflexes led to the investigation of the reflex action of the brain or "cerebral automatisms." Reflex actions of this kind were used to explain everything from acting compulsively to composing symphonies. Physiological explanations of phenomena of this kind seemed insufficient to some and, in the 1880s, Frederic Myers and Pierre Janet developed psychological frameworks for understanding these phenomena, positing hidden centers of intelligence at work in the individual, outside ordinary awareness, which produce what came to be called "psychological automatisms." Their attempts to unify this psychological framework with the existing physiological one failed. Nevertheless, their work played a crucial role in paving the way for what Ellenberger called dynamic psychiatry, which accepts the reality of an unconscious dynamic of the psyche.