I have come to understand "pure psychic automatism" as a state of mind where the internalized norms, morality and taboos of society are overthrown, allowing the unconscious to truly speak freely (as often happens in dreams).

Pure psychic automatism is inescapable.
Those who are not aware of this are voluntarily blind.
The secret processes of overdetermination are endless.
The Unconscious is ultracivilised.
They use delusions like tear gas to disperse the crowd.
Freedom starts at the impossible as iridescent ashes eat our identities clean.
Boundless annihilating desire.

Regarding automatism, Breton later, perhaps in the Entretiens (translated into English as Conversations: The Autobiography of Surrealism), stated he should have written that psychic automatism was 'outside all conscious aesthetic and moral preoccupations.' This implies there's a kind of driving force that is less than, or more than, conscious, which comes into play during automatic exploration. But I generally agree with what Brandon said regarding the social/personal impact of automatism. A release from socialized hesitations is an experience of freedom in all its paradoxical qualities...If psychic automatism is an internal process that sometimes interrupts the conscious ego, automatistic expression is where we allow the poetic and imaginal currents free reign, without imposing our conscious selves upon them to the extent that they are choked or deformed. Psychoanalysis and the mediums were some of the early inspiration for the surrealist notion of automatism.

I personally take great pleasure in doing automatic writing when I wake up. It's easier to access creative material this way for me, and it can smoothly fill a page or two before I become more awake. There are times when a short session will stretch on into a dozen pages or more as bits of journal entries, comments from recent events, and so forth seem to be triggered by the poetic flow. There have also been what I believe are called 'memory traces' that seem to be activated by the writing. As I understand this, it's when one experiences the impact of a past event, possibly in the distant past, in an emotional and very present way. A curious and deeply interesting process.

If you're ever laying around half asleep and fully formed sentences or scenes start playing across your inner vision, or fragments of sounds and voices appear, that would be a good time to pay attention without becoming overly conscious or trying to force it to the extent that things dry up. I've had good success in the past by talking into a tape recorder during states of extreme exhaustion, and that way I was able to speak the sentences and scenes coming to me without having to move or turn the light on. What fun.

Shibek