ABSTRACT
In ‘What is Surrealism?’, André Breton recalled how he ‘practised occasionally on the sick’ during the war using Freud’s ‘methods of investigation’, as he experimented in written monologue by throwing out ideas on paper, followed by critical examination. He invited Philippe Soupault to do this with him and soon they were writing automatically and comparing results. Although of course their contents varied, Breton noted that
there were similar faults of construction, the same hesitant manner, and also, in both cases, an illusion of extraordinary verve, much emotion, a considerable assortment of images of a quality such as we should never have been able to obtain in the normal way of writing, a very special sense of the picturesque, and, here and there, a few pieces of out-and-out buffoonery.
