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As we have seen, habit has links with, but ultimately differs from other unconscious repetitions such as instinct, circles of fate and the death drive, in that it begins with more or less conscious choice, involves learning and repetition and then slips into the unconscious domain. In Merleau-Ponty’s view, habit and the coincidence it brings about between body and self is a positive thing - one can gain mastery over one’s habits, adopting body techniques which no longer require conscious interruption or hesitation.^ Yet as we have also seen, when one is so familiar in one’s routines as to be hypnotised by one’s habits, losing self-conscious awareness can be dangerous, opening one up to the suggestive influence and will of another - the downside of puppethood.^ We have seen too how habit, by creating predictable repetitions in one’s life as ‘social hypnosis,’ the somnambulistic underground of everyday life, on the one hand can help to shield one from doubt and threats of apocalypse, while on the other hand, when broken, depending on the degree of trauma this brings about, can turn to obsession, leading one into the performance of increasingly bizarre and idiosyncratic ritualistic methods of maintaining certainty.

In this chapter I will return to Merleau-Ponty’s view of habit as an adopted ‘body technique,’ while avoiding now (on the basis of excursions into the relation between habit, loss of autonomy and anxiety in the previous two chapters) his pseudo-athletic optimism. I will turn to more autonomous realms of habit and different kinds of ‘natural somnambulism.’ By natural I mean not just that one can slip in and out of a fully ingrained habit without consciousness, but that there can also be a more personal, autonomously tailored and controlled somnambulism; a waking sleep in which the subject invents and acts out their own habits. While Merleau-Ponty’s view of habit is fundamentally a habit of the healthy - an anonymous kind of everyone which ends up being no-one, I will look at habit of the ‘sick,’ those who express through their repetitions, rituals and routines something of a Sick Soul as James might put it.^ Merleau-Ponty does not adequately take into account the fact that the desire to form a habit must by necessity stem from an initial ‘lack’ of some kind. For although one’s habit might not arise from a difficulty or a pain, to adopt even the ‘healthier’ habit of a ‘skill’ demands a beforehand in which one didn’t have the skill but desired it. And as such, although I use the word ‘autonomous’ I am never far from ^ Cf. Chapter 1.

acknowledging the shadowy lack behind each and every habitual practice we will encounter in this chapter. The habits illustrating the next and final pages of the thesis are various and cannot easily be generalised as indicative of one and the same thing, but all, in their own idiosyncratic ways provide some form of expression and ‘production’ that harnesses repetitive activity. For better or worse. Habit here is about the creation of an inner world, and the possibility of self transformation this brings with it.

Here’s one small, and in this instance ‘cheery,’ story to begin with.

In contrast to the crazy theatrical world of manipulative, despotic doctors and performing ‘hysterics,’'^ in a 19th century comer of England, Harriet Martineau, writer and social reformer, began mesmeric treatment for a debilitating physical illness which had kept her housebound for five years. Initially unconvinced by what she read in the newspapers about mesmerism, Martineau was intrigued enough to buy a book on the subject, and she and her companion / maid studied it closely, learning the art, so that in September 1844 she wrote, ‘On June 24th, my affectionate maid tried her powers, and gave me ease and appetite, - for the first time for 5 years; and I walked about my room and chattered. [...] The broad line is passed, - between uselessness and usefulness. I feel I can work again - and this is all I care a b o u t . B y Febmary the following year, Martineau wrote of the hallucinatory visions she experienced while mesmerised:

I saw the march of the whole human race, past, present and to come, through existence and their finding the Source of Life. Another time, I saw all the Idolatories of the earth coming up to worship at the ascending series of Life-fountains, while I discovered these to be all connected, - each flowing down to fill the next - so that all the worshippers were seen by me to be verily adoring the Source. Such imagery I have, of course, to leave unuttered: but a world of speculations and aspirations arises from them which can be spoken, and are spoken with a delight I never conceived of. For the first time in my life, I find language a sufficient instrument.’^

In August the same year, Martineau ended a letter, ‘I am in robust health, - have bought a field, and am beginning to build my cottage upon it. Moreover, I am mesmerising the sick and suffering with more and more success, and I need not say, am very happy.’’

^ Cf. William James, The Varieties o f Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902), London: Penguin Books, 1985, pp. 127-165.

Cf. Chapter 2 and Appendix 2.

^ Harriet Martineau, ‘Letter to W.J. Fox,’ September 15, 1844, in Martineau, Selected Letters, (ed.) Valerie Sanders, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990, p. 101.

^ Martineau, ‘Letter to Richard Monckton Milnes,’ February 22,1845, Selected Letters, p. 108. ’ Martineau, ‘Letter to Edward Moxon,’ August 16, 1845, Selected Letters, p. 111.

Moreover, almost a quarter of a century later, Martineau was still recommending mesmerism to her friends.’*

The book that Martineau and her maid studied was J.P. Deleuze’s 1825 Practical Instructions fo r Animal Magnetism, a book intended to teach the lay person to use mesmerism communally and effectively.^ Deleuze, a trained medic, had no time for the fantastical speculations of the stage magnetists.*® In direct contrast to the manipulated / manipulating antics of Charcot and his hysterics, Deleuze emphasised modesty and caution: the best magnetist for a woman is her husband; for a husband his wife; for a young lady, her sister or mother. The mesmerist must focus their attention on healing their patient, who, by reciprocally concentrating on the magnetist and their repetitive passes, would become sensitive to the positive fluid emanating from the magnetist’s brain. However sceptical one might be about the presence of magnetic fluid, one can imagine Martineau lying in a darkened room having her body rhythmically passed over and over by her familiar maid / friend’s hands and how this might at least pull her attention away from bodily pain. In Martineau’s case, with power conflicts neutralised, this intelligent, practical woman (far from being an hysteric) experienced not only relief from pain, but hallucinatory visions. In contrast to popular notions of somnambulistic ‘extra-sensoiy perception,’ Deleuze explained how: ‘It is in no wise proven that in the state of somnambulism one has knowledge which one did not have in the waking state: one has simply sensations infinitely more delicate, a distant recollection of everything that one has known or by which one has been affected, and a great facility for making new combinations of ideas.’ As Bergson also suggested, induced ‘sleep’ might lead one into the vast field of one’s virtual images, dream images, the realm of the unconscious set free from the limitations of conscious awareness.

* Martineau, ‘Letter to Mrs. H. Grote, February 13, 1867,’ and ‘Letter to Henry Reeve,’ February 23, 1868, Selected Letters, pp. 207-210; 216-220.

^ Crabtree, From Mesmer to Freud, pp. 236-265, differentiates between contemporary accounts of various practitioners favouring either mesmerism or hypnosis, with more detail than I will repeat here. Generally it was thought that where hypnotism required the complete passivity of the subject, mesmerism allowed the subject’s autonomy to remain to a greater extent. For my purposes, as both techniques utilised repetition and mental concentration, both of which are also major traits of habit, I will not attempt to differentiate between the effects of one or the other in more depth.

Deleuze’s scepticism is evident in his criticism of the ‘special’ powers of suggestion that some practitioners of mesmerism claimed to possess: ‘I have often seen patients convinced that if they were able to consult a doctor whose reputation had struck them they would soon be cured. [,..] How does it happen then that a magnétiser who promises nothing produces a greater effect than a famous doctor?’ Deleuze, Histoire critique du magnétism animal, Paris: Mame, 1813, p. 119. Gauld believes that many of Deleuze’s ideas are still valid in the therapeutic use of hypnotherapy today. Chapters on Deleuze are contained in Gauld, A History o f Hypnotism, pp. 116-123; Forrest, Hypnotism, pp. 84-93; and Crabtree, From Mesmer to Freud, pp. 101-135,

As I have shown, many of the techniques used to induce somnambulism via mesmerism and hypnosis can also be seen to be traits of habit. Brown, among others, in more recent clinical studies of the therapeutic power of hypnosis suggests that the methods used to induce the hypnotic trance, such as fixed attention and repetitive rhythm, draw one into a necessary rhythmic quality of organic life, that life has rhythmic continuity and repetitive order with or without a specific external schedule to regulate it.^^ He describes the presence of ‘circadian rhythms,’ an adaptable series of regulators which condition the body, and which allow one to adapt one’s rhythms harmoniously in accord with the rhythms of one’s environment. In this case, the adoption and development of ‘body techniques,’ would be in part led by a need for rhythm beyond one’s awareness, while at the same time this might in fact lead to one’s living in a semi-hypnotic state. During habitual repetition, the sleeping acting subject, depersonalised or desubjectified, is, through combined rhythm, assimilated into their environment, becoming a part of things, a part of the rhythm of things. On this view, the rhythms of life are, at least in part, given and one functions mimetically according to such laws. However, we have seen that habit can function independently from an organic, instinctual base, therefore if habit and hypnosis are correlated, one must appeal to more complex models.

If habit leads to the same state as that of hypnosis, but without necessarily involving the dominant presence or manipulative controlling influence of a specific external force, will or puppet master, one can suggest to oneself an absolutely different set of rules, drawing one’s own map, setting one’s own time-scale of rhythms and repetitions to which one can adapt o n e s e l f . I rise at sunset and sleep at sunrise, it suits me fine. Even according to Brown, it doesn’t matter whether the repetitive order sought and practised by the individual is based on fiction or fact, imagination or reality: ‘Repetition of what we understand with

Brown, The Hypnotic Brain, p. 88.

In fact, even if one is subject to the presence of an external director, the underground journey can be disrupted; from within the somnambulism of life, one can, and perhaps on occasion must, create a counter rhythm. This is what Erika, the protagonist in Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher, trans. Joachim Neugroschel, London: Serpent’s Tail, 1999, did. Erika, like the puppets of Kleist, is a manipulated figure, though in her case it is a puppet-mistress, her mother, who everyday, ‘unscrews the top of HER head, sticks her hand inside, self-assured, and then grubs and rummages about. Mother messes everything up and puts nothing back where it belongs. Making a quick choice, she plucks out a few things, scrutinises them closely, and tosses them away. Then she arranges a few others and scrubs them vigorously with a brush, a sponge, a dustrag. Next, she vigorously dries them off and screws them in again.’ (22) Erika’s mother always wanted her daughter to be a pianist, but it is really the mother who wants to play, through Erika, Erika is merely her instrument, her prosthesis. ‘Mother yanks at HER guide ropes. Two hands zoom out and play the Brahms again, this time better. [...] She is a weary dolphin, listlessly preparing to do her final trick.’ (55) Yet Erika, the weary pet.

gradual alterations leads to the extension o f our knowledge through both conscious and unconscious learning. All learning, in a real sense, depends on having a story in mind."^'^ Gilles Deleuze points out too that habit can be adopted through ‘personal fictions,’ ‘As a matter of fact, habit can create for itself an equivalent experience; it can invoke fictional repetitions that render it independent of r e a l i t y . O n e can exist in a different realm, subject to nothing but the rhythms of one’s own field o f time and space.

In order to explore such a possibility, however, it will be necessary to take what may seem a perverse route - for I will suggest that this formation of an interior spatio- temporal field through the manipulation of habits is first clearly discernible in the religious life. The paradox o f ‘wilfully practised submission’ to one’s master can be seen in much religious ritual, thus indicating a willed discipline of habit-formation. Faith in the invisible, in other words in that which it is as impossible to prove negative as it is to prove positive as it has no empirical status, is what I seek to address here now. There is a perverse, circuitous autonomy at play under the guise of passive faith which can be found to embrace a peculiar kind o f ‘freedom.’