Extraordinary psychic claim from grieving mother: Dead son’s spirit holds my hand to write letters to me.

[anonymous]

Extraordinary psychic claim from grieving mother: Dead son’s spirit holds my hand to write letters to me.

The Sun has an article about a mother who learned to communicate with her deceased son through automatic writing:

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Automatic writing? Seriously?

~~ Paul

[Craig Weiler]

Interesting story. I believe her. I see no reason not to. What she is claiming is not all that unusual or weird.

On another note, I notice that Chris French weighed in with a callous, belief based bit of nonsense.

[Scott]

Well, I don't deny that she believes what is going on. It just does not mean that it is a spirit that is guiding her hand. Ideomotor effect explains that just fine.
Even more when you look at how poor automatic writing has stood up to testing the ability to actually provide information without the person holding the pen knowing what is asked and or answered.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Seriously? We're to simply believe that she did not write the words herself?

~~ Paul

[tempel]

I have a problem with this too. Why? Because it doesn't even work when the person supposedly guiding the medium's hand isn't dead. See the facilitated communication scandal of the 80s, where autistic persons were thought to communicate via a ouija-board-ish technique while physically supported by a "facilitator" with an ever-so-light touch...

Edit: haha, I just realized it's actually the inverse situation from automatic writing. I think it still speaks volumes though...

[JCearley]

Originally Posted by Craig Weiler

On another note, I notice that Chris French weighed in with a callous, belief based bit of nonsense.

Um, what?

Originally Posted by Chris French

IF Sally is taking comfort in believing that she is in touch with her son in this way, that’s great.

Diplomatic.

Originally Posted by Chris French

But if we are to be objective, there is absolutely no proof that she is in fact talking to his spirit.

It might be proof for her, but I can see the potential objection that if she is the person who knew the deceased and is also the medium then we can't know that it isn't her bringing up memories of the person or filling in the blanks. This is how one grades mediums to see if they have any authenticity (or skill at good guessing, depending on your view.)

Originally Posted by Chris French

Automatic writing has a very long history, going back to the early days of the last century, if not before.

Technically correct.

Originally Posted by Chris French

It is caused by the ideomotor effect, whereby the person causing the movements is doing so unconsciously.

The only problem I have with this is, is that it's been studied elsewhere in psychology that the subconcious is notably bad at processing logic; it's also pretty bad at communication (subconcious can't figure out how negatives work for instance.) That isn't to say that it's not whats happening, but since the ideomotor effect depends on claiming the subconcious is at work then it counters other studies (shouldn't a tired person, operating more on their subconcious or lower functions, be able to do things better on the whole if their under-wiring is this creative?)

Originally Posted by Chris French

Experiments have proved spirit activity has nothing to do with it.

Don't know what he's talking about; I wasn't aware experiments even had the ability to know a spirit was involved, to know if one wasn't.

Originally Posted by Chris French

So in terms of these writings, they simply do not constitute evidence of life after death.

Once you note the above problem of we can't know the mother isn't just recalling what she wants, since she is both the sitter and the medium, you can see his viewpoint pretty logically.

This doesn't look very callous to me; I could rewrite it to be "less callous" pretty easily:

While the idea that Sally is talking with her deceased son brings her much comfort, I'm afraid it can only prove life after death for herself; we have no scientific way of knowing if this is really her subconcious venting grief (through an incidious, often overlooked ideomotor effect), or something more.

Same message, no?

Originally Posted by Scott

Ideomotor effect.

Not to disagree, but I think that card is a bit overused. The skeptical trend of blaming the subconscious (essentially saying that no human, not even the witness him/herself can't be a credible witness to their own event) is patently unfalsifiable. Furthermore, even if such a scenario was legitimate it would still be movements that the person was unaware of so you could pin the ideomotor effect on hypothetical legitimate events as well.

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Seriously? We're to simply believe that she did not write the words herself?

Of course she did; even if a spirit was involved it would be writing with her physical hand, so this statement is true in all circumstances. :P

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by JCearley

Of course she did; even if a spirit was involved it would be writing with her physical hand, so this statement is true in all circumstances. :P

Cripes. Obviously when I said "write ... herself" I meant all by herself, without the aid of her son's spirit.

~~ Paul

[Scott]

Originally Posted by JCearley

Not to disagree, but I think that card is a bit overused. The skeptical trend of blaming the subconscious (essentially saying that no human, not even the witness him/herself can't be a credible witness to their own event) is patently unfalsifiable. Furthermore, even if such a scenario was legitimate it would still be movements that the person was unaware of so you could pin the ideomotor effect on hypothetical legitimate events as well.

Saying that particular effects are the ideomotor effect says nothing about a person not being able to be a credible witness. You will have to link the two topics.
The ideomotor effect is about the body/subconscious being able to make subtle movements that the person is not aware that they are doing. The methods of determining that the information being gained is dependent on what the subject is aware of is very clear and simple. The point is where this is an explanation is when there is the claim the information is not coming from the subject. If you control the information the subject knows it is easy to test. Dousing is easily shown to be ideomotor effect. Facilitated writing is easy to test for in cases where the person being asked the question is alive and the writer is not told the question or is supplied different questions. Each case requires different methods to detect - the thing is, we KNOW this effect can and does produce these kinds of results - the dead speaking to us in any form ... not so much.