Automatic writing is script which has been produced unconsciously or involuntarily, although the writer is in an alert state, whether it be the normal waking state or hypnosis. The hand writes, though the subject does not consciously direct it. Ordinarily, though not always, the subject is entirely unaware of what the hand is writing, and often the writing is obtained better if the attention is diverted and directed toward other matters. The first knowledge then obtained by the subject of what has been written, or that the hand has written at all, is on reading the script. Some persons can cultivate the art of this kind of writing. Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland, for example, deliberately educated themselves to write automatically, and each published a volume of her records. In other normal people automatic writing seems to develop accidentally or under special circumstances. In certain types of hysteria it is very easily obtained. “Planchette,” which many years ago was in vogue as a parlor game, was only a particular device to effect automatic writing. Footnote 6: In this particular experiment, when the hand wrote “automatically,” the second _hypnotic consciousness vanished_ and the subject went into a _trance_ state, or what is equivalent to a third hypnotic state. There was no consciousness present, excepting that which was associated with the writing hand. At other times, in experiments of this class with this same subject, the hypnotic or the waking consciousness, as the case might be, persisted _alert_ while the hand wrote. For the purpose of the experiment in recovering memories this change in the psychological condition is not of importance, the principle remains the same. Footnote 7: _Journal of the S. P. R._, July, 1906. A fuller account of this case was later published in the same journal, August, 1911. Footnote 8: A remark made by the subject in the trance state, though passed over in the report as apparently inconsequential, has really much meaning when interpreted through that conception of the unconscious memory process which will be developed in succeeding chapters. The subject, while in the trance, claimed to be in a mental world wherein “is to be found, it is said, not only everything that has ever happened or will happen, but all thoughts, dreams, and imagination.” In other words, in that psychical condition into which she passed, all the conserved conscious experiences of her life could be awakened into memory. Footnote 9: _Proceedings of the S. P. R._, October, 1906, Chap. XII. Footnote 10: