Automatism

A term from the field of psychology that denotes the separation between a person’s behavior and his or her consciousness of it, which the Surrealists applied to techniques of writing and artmaking that they believed unlocked the creative forces of the unconscious. Many later artists—notably the Abstract Expressionists and Tachists—adopted the idea, resorting to chance, hallucination, hypnosis, and intoxication to guide their production.