Psychography

Psychography (from the Greek, writings of the mind or writings of the soul), according to the spiritist vocabulary, is the capacity attributed to certain mediuns of automatically writing messages dictated by spirits.
Concept
According to the spiritist doctrine, psychography is only one of several possibilities of mediumships. Allan Kardec classified it as a type of intelligent manifestation, for consisting in the written communication of a supposedly supernatural entity or spirit, by using a living person as a communication medium.
According to Kardec, Psychography can be a conscious process, a semi-automatic process or a automatic process, depending on the degree of consciousness of the medium during the writing process.
In the first case, the medium is completelu conscious of what he is writing, even though he can not say he is the author of the ideas contained in the text. He has the capacity to influence what is being written, avoiding information that might seem to him to be inconvenient or inadequade.
In the second case, that of semi-automaticwriting, the medium could be conscious of the phenomenon happening to him, notice even the influx of ideas, but would be incapable of influencing the text, which would basically come from his hands without him having any control over it. The impulse of writing would be, in this case, stronger than his will to stop it.
In the third case, thath of automatic writing, the medium could write without even noticing that he is writing. This includes the hability to have a conversation with someone else while the hand is writing something completely different. This would happen because, according to Kardec, these types of mediums are able to allow the spirits to take their writing hand and do with it what they will.
Besides the spiritist doctrine, there are many other mystical currents of belief and religionsthat admit the possibility of the occurrence of such phenomena, as Umbanda and Teosophy.
Some of the psychographed texts throughout history are attributed to famous dead authors, like Arthur Conan Doyle, Camilo Castelo Branco and Albert Einstein.
Psychographed bibliography
The classification of psychographed works, according to CIP-Brasil (the brazilian union of national book writers) is done with the theme Spiritism, and the spiritual authors of the work must be cited, with a note indicating their spiritual nature. For instance: Ângelis, Joanna de (Spirit).
For citations, the model to be followed there is: title of the book, spiritual author, medium, place, publisher, year, as in the example:
::Plenitude/ Joanna de Ângelis; psychographed by Divaldo Pereira Franco - Niterói, Arte & Cultura, 1991.
Accepting authorship
Some researchers state thatpsychography is an illusion or fraud, since nobody to date was able to proove the spiritual authorship of psychographed works.
Carlos Augusto Perandréa, researcher at the State University of Londrina, however, studied the signatures of psychographed texts written by brazilian medium Chico Xavier using the same technique utilized in the recognition of signatures in banks, police stations and the judicial system, called graphology. The results of his study indicated that the signatures of the psycographed texts looked a lot like the signature of the spiritual authors when they were still alive. .
Psychography in legal trials
In Brazil, in several cases, psychographies were used as prove in legal tribunals. One of the most recent cases, registered in may 2006, in Porto Alegre (RS), is that of the accused Iara Marques Barcelos being made innocent due to a letter written by the murdered victim. MOre recently, in may 17th, 2007, the trial of the accused, Milton dos Santos, for the murder of Paulo Roberto Pires, was suspended do to a letter received by the medium Rogério Leite in a spiritist session in 2004, through which Paulo Roberto Pires wrote that the accused was innocent.
Psychography and Psychopictography
Psychopictography consists of a medium manifestation, by which, in place of writing, would happen the production of images, drawings, or paintings.
References and notes
Bibliography
* The Spirit's Book - Allan Kardec (PDF file)
* The Mediums' Book - Allan Kardec (PDF file)
* The Gospel According To The Spiritism - Allan Kardec (PDF file)

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