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Notes on Hallucinations. III

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

Extract

The theories by which it has been endeavoured to explain the existence of hallucinations are manifold. In this field, as in so many others where we watch the play of mental phenomena, our point of view varies from time to time, so that the explanations which were once deemed more or less satisfactory become unmeaning when the problem to be solved has itself shifted ground.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1903 

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References

Notes

(1) Esquirol, Des maladies mentales, 1838, tome i, pp. 159, 191, 192, 201.Google Scholar

(2) Dagonet, Traite des maladies mentales, 1894, p. 63.Google Scholar

(3) Ball, Leçons sur les maladies mentales, pp. in and 112.Google Scholar

(4) Tumburini, Revue scientifique, 1881.Google Scholar

(5) Kandinsky, Kritische und klinische Betrachtungen im Gebiete der Sinnestäuschungen, 1885, p. 148.Google Scholar

(6) Max Simon defines hallucination thus :—“A sensory perception without an external object to give it birth” (compare Ball, “A perception without an object,” Leçonsur les maladies mentales, deux, éd., p. 62; and Bianchi, “A subjective perception,” Trattato di Psichiatria, p. 200). In another place Simon asks, “What is an hallucination in point of fact?” and answers, “A sensation which runs along a sensory nerve ina direction the reverse of normal impressions” (Le monde des réves,deux, éd., pp. 72, 93, 103). Simon does not claim originality for this view, which he says was entertained by Morel, who again followed Buchez. I have not been able to verify the reference to Morel, which is rather vague; but elsewhere that author says, “I reject none of the definitions of hallucination; I give my adhesion to none” (Maladies mentales, deux, tome, p. 472).Google Scholar

(7) Maury, Le sommeil et les réves, quatrième éd., p. 78, cf. Bail, Maladies mentales, p. 64.Google Scholar

(8) Séglas, “Les hallucinations unilatèrales,"Annales mèdico-psychologiques8,me sèrieto,me 6me, p. 230.Google Scholar

(9) Baillarger, Des hallucinations, etc., 1846, pp. 385 et seq.Google Scholar

(10) Sèglas,Leçonscliniques sur les maladies mentales, 1895, pp. 13 et seq. ; Troubles du langage chez les aliènè1s8,92, pp. HT et seq.; and several earlier papers referred to in these works. Sèglasrefers to the fact that Fournie and Max Simon (see the work above quoted, p. 103) had regarded these conditions as disturbances of the function of language, and that Lèluthad already suspected this connection.Google Scholar

(11) Lugaro, “Sulle Pseudo allucinazioni (Allucinazioni Psichiche di Baillarger),” Riv. di Pat. Nerv, e Mentale, Genn. e Febb., 1903.Google Scholar

(12) Lugaro, op. cit., “It is probable that this fundamental disturbance depends on an elective and systematic lesion of special cortical neurons. The system engaged cannot be either sensory or motor, because the sensibility and the motor capacity are intact ; nor can it be a system set apart for the association of images, because the memory and ideation are preserved ; the lesion must therefore engage a system of neurons set apart for the supreme co-ordination between representations, the corresponding emotions, and the execution of acts.”Google Scholar

(13) Cramer, “Ueber Sinnestäuschungen bei Geisteskranken Taubstummen,” Archiv, f. Psych., Band xxviii, s. 875.Google Scholar

(14) Exemplified in a case at present under my care, in which a female patient who suffers from auditory hallucinations hears in her right ear the voice of her priest comforting her, and in her left the voice of the devil tempting her and suggesting suicide and despair.Google Scholar

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