Ideomotor phenomenon

The phrase is most commonly used in reference to the process whereby a thought or mental image brings about a seemingly "reflexive" or automatic muscular reaction, often of minuscule degree, and potentially outside of the awareness of the subject.

Braid soon adopted Carpenter's ideo-motor terminology, to facilitate the transmission of his most fundamental views, based upon those of his teacher, the philosopher Thomas Brown,[9] that the efficacy of hypnotic suggestion was contingent upon the subject's concentration upon a single (thus, "dominant") idea.

[10] His decision was based upon suggestions made to Carpenter (in 1854) by their friend in common, Daniel Noble, that the activity that Carpenter was describing would be more accurately understood in its wider applications (viz., wider than pendulums and ouija boards) if it were to denominated the "ideo-dynamic principle":[11]In order that I may do full justice to two esteemed friends, I beg to state, in connection with this term monoideo-dynamics, that, several years ago, Dr. W. B. Carpenter introduced the term ideo-motor to characterise the reflex or automatic muscular motions which arise merely from ideas associated with motion existing in the mind, without any conscious effort of volition.

I have, therefore, adopted the term monoideo-dynamics, as still more comprehensive and characteristic as regards the true mental relations which subsist during all dynamic changes which take place, in every other function of the body, as well as in the muscles of voluntary motion.

[12]Scientific tests by the English scientist Michael Faraday, Manchester surgeon James Braid,[13] the French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul, and the American psychologists William James and Ray Hyman have demonstrated that many phenomena attributed to spiritual or paranormal forces, or to mysterious "energies", are actually due to ideomotor action.

[18] It is strongly associated with the practice of analytical hypnotherapy based on "uncovering techniques" such as Watkins' "affect bridge",[19] whereby a subject's "yes", "no", "I don't know", or "I don't want to answer" responses to an operator's questions are indicated by physical movements rather than verbal signals; and are produced per medium of a pre-determined (between operator and subject) and pre-calibrated set of responses.