woman who unconsciously "took in" the details of a friend's
appearance:

I asked B.C.A. (without warning and after having covered her
eyes) to describe the dress of a friend who was present and with
whom she had been conversing perhaps some twenty minutes. She was
unable to do so beyond saying that he wore dark clothes. I then
found that I myself was unable to give a more detailed
description of his dress, although we had lunched and been
together about two hours. B.C.A. was then asked to write a
description automatically. Her hand wrote as follows (she was
unaware that her hand was writing):

"He has on a dark greenish gray suit, a stripe in it--little
rough stripe; black bow cravat; shirt with three little stripes
in it; black laced shoes; false teeth; one finger gone; three
buttons on his coat."

The written description was absolutely correct. The stripes in
the coat were almost invisible. I had not noticed
his teeth or the loss of a finger and we had to count the buttons
to make sure of their number owing to their partial concealment
by the folds of the unbuttoned coat. The shoe-strings I am sure
under the conditions would have escaped nearly every one's
notice.[22]

[Footnote 22: Prince: _The Unconscious_, p. 53.]

Automatic writing, the method used to uncover this subconscious
perception, is a favorite method with some investigators and is often