automatism

Definition

Automatic or involuntary action.

Etymology

From automat(on) + -ism.

Example Sentences

• "Overcoming the gravity of representation and the figurative, automatism and acquired reflexes, she mixes brute force and translucid emotions to paint an ontological, disquieting, enigmatic human figure free from artifice, universal in its expression."
• "[G]eneralising this phenomenon, Mr. 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. The simplest instance of an automatism is the phenomenon of post-hypnotic suggestion, so-called."