By this trick of splitting-off, or dissociation, the operator is able to allow ideas and memories from the unconscious to come to the surface unrestrained by the cramping control of the consciousness; hence the product of the automatism is usually fantastic and imaginative, though memories are available which may be beyond the reach of the consciousness.
An excellent example of this dissociation is given in The Gate of Remembrance, a book which I shall consider later.
The view might be held that the dissociated stream is really a part of the unconscious whose results make themselves manifest in the consciousness, as I described in the first chapter when writing about intuition; but in automatic writing the main personality is not aware of the results: the dissociated writer does not know what he has written until he reads it, and it may be as much news to him as to a bystander.
The two streams of thought flowing side by side exemplify one kind of dissociation of consciousness, and others of this kind will be described later; this type I shall call continuous dissociation, but there is another which at first sight seems quite different and of which I will give an example:—
An ex-soldier suffered from fears and depressions which made his life a misery, and an endeavour was made to find the cause in a repressed memory. His account of events was complete up to a certain time, but there his recollections ceased; then one day something touched up the hidden memory and in the presence of his doctor he went through a most dramatic scene, showing horror at falling down a dark dug-out upon the bodies of dead Germans and at subsequent experiences which had strongly affected him and whose revival produced again the same emotions as the original events. At the next interview the following dialogue took place:—
'I want you to tell me about falling down the dug-out.'
'What dug-out, sir?'
'The one you told me about last time.'
'I don't remember telling you about it.'
'Yes you do, the dug-out at....'