Automatic writing by a blind subject.

Abstract

T HE charts to be shown with this paper present reproductions of selected specimens from a series of automatic writings done in the summer and autumn of 1920. The subject, to be known as E-, was a man sixty-five years of age, stone blind from the age of two and one-half years. Professionally, E-was a musician, distinguished in two continents as a concert pianist, composer, and author of works on musical interpretation and criticism. He also held various college positions as teacher of piano and lecturer on aesthetics. He was acquainted with much of the best in literature, as well as in music, and in some of the other arts. The science which had been given him was largely of the popular or pseudo-sort.E-claimed to have no knowledge of the alphabet save only a partial list of the letters which he made by conscious effort (see line one of Plate VIII) in a form very different in most instances from that used in the automatic script. His writings for publication and most of his correspondence had been dictated to an amanuensis. Intimate letters written by his own hand had been in a Braille resembling not at all the forms of script or print.In 1917, Mrs. E-(or "Nettie") had passed away. With her going, E-said, the "light" of his personal and professional life went out. He suffered a physical and something of a mental collapse, following that event, but rallied and was able to continue his work, successfully, during the remaining seven years of Ms life. To aid in his recovery friends had sought-not in vain-for mediumistic messages from "Nettie". E-was assured that Mrs. E-was often near him and would in time "learn" to manifest herself to him in an "evidential manner".Such assurance had come with peculiar impressiveness in early June of 1920, when E-, enroute to Ms summer home (a home full of memories of "Nettie") had stopped in Boston and paid a visit to a noted medium there. A little later the summer days were being spent by E-and a group of house guests in strenuous practice for coming concerts. The evenings were occupied in the reading of * Abstract of a paper read at the Columbus meeting of the American Psychological Association, Dec. 29, 1927. * This "ghost", according to E-, had appeared to him many times and menacingly, throughout his life, and especially in his youthful hours of piano practice.Concerning him E-once consulted William James. The ghost was finally "laid"after the events reported in this paper. But that is "another story".