Nonconscious Movements

In a technique called facilitated communication, noncommunicative individuals who are autistic and mentally retarded are said to type astonishing communications on a keyboard. Despite the abundant evidence that the communications originate from the "facilitators" who hold the hands of the disabled individuals or otherwise have contact with them - and who are unaware and deny that they are guiding the clients' hands - this technique is forcefully defended and indeed is growing in popularity throughout the world. For many, the popularity of this method in the face of overwhelming negative evidence is surprising and mystifying, but this book portrays facilitated communication as merely the latest in a long line of phenomena described and explained by scientists since the early 19th century. The existence of these phenomena - mind reading, the whirling pendulum, table rapping, dowsing, automatic writing, the Ouija board, and even the belief that horses can be taught to spell and do arithmetic - depends on a single principle: involuntary muscle movements. This book proposes that nonconscious movements evolved as adaptive mechanisms, thereby freeing consciousness for greater information processing. Unfortunately, nonconscious movements have been recruited by the mind to support wishful thinking and fixed ideas. The field is witnessing an extraordinary example of this recruitment, and consequently it provides a foundation for scientific study concerning the nature of consciousness and the roles played by self-deception and wishful thinking.