Definition of "automatism"

automatism

/ɔːˈtɒmətɪzəm/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural automatisms
1. Automatic or involuntary action.
2. The power of initiating vital processes from within the cell, organ, or organism, independent of external stimulus.
3. The doctrine that animals are automata, operating according to mechanical laws.
4. (psychology) An action performed subconsciously, without any apparent direction from the mind; a thought which appears spontaneously in one's consciousness.
  Quotations
  generalising 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.
  1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Folio Society, published 2008, page 200
5. (art) A surrealist painting technique whereby one attempts to move the brush, pen etc. without conscious control over it.
  Quotations
  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.
  2013, Alice Fabre, Metal Language