116 P8TCH0L0OY. 



other only within a few years. Dr. Kandinsty writes of 

 their difference as follows : 



' ' In carelessly questioning a patient we may confound his pseudo- 

 hallucinatory perceptions with hallucinations. But to the unconfused 

 consciousness of the patient himself, even though he be imbecile, the- 

 identification of the two phenomena is impossible, at least in the sphere- 

 of vision. At the moment of having a pseudo-hallucination of sight^ 

 the patient feels himself in an entirely different relation to this subjec- 

 tive sensible appearance, from that in which he finds himself whilst 

 subject to a true visual hallucination. The latter is reality itself ; the' 

 former, on the contrary, remains always a subjective phenomenon 

 which the individual commonly regards either as sent to him as a sign 

 of God's grace, or as artificially induced by his secret persecutors . . . 

 If he knows by his own experience what a genuine hallucination is, it is 

 quite impossible for him to mistake the pseudo-hallucination for it. . . . 

 A concrete example will make the difference clear : 



"Dr. N. L. . . . heard one day suddenly amongst the voices of his^ 

 persecutors ('coming from a hollow space in the midst of the wail') a 

 rather loud voice impressively saying to him : ' Change your national 

 allegiance.' Understanding this to mean that his only hope consisted 

 in ceasing to be subject to the Czar of Russia, he reflected a moment 

 what allegiance would be better, and resolved to become an English sub- 

 ject. At the same moment he saw a pseudo-hallucinatory lion of 

 natural size, which appeared and quickly laid its fore-paws on his^ 

 shoulders. He had a lively feeling of these paws as a tolerably painful 

 local pressure (complete hallucination of touch). Then the same voice 

 from the wall said : 'Now you have a lion— now you will rule,' where- 

 upon the patient recollected that the lion was the national emblem of 

 England. The lion appeared to L. very distinct and vivid, but he never- 

 theless remained conscious, as he afterwards expressed it, that he saw the 

 animal, not with his bodily but with his mental eyes. (After his re- 

 covery he called analogous apparitions by the name of ' expressive-plastie 

 ideas.') Accordingly he felt no terror, even though he felt the contact of 

 the claws. . . . Had the lion been a complete hallucination, the patient, 

 as he himself remarked after recovery, would have felt great fear, and 

 very likely screamed or taken to flight. Had it been a simple image of 

 the fancy he would not have connected it with the voices, of whose ob- 

 jective reality he was at the time quite convinced." * 



From ordinary images of memory and fancy, pseudo- 

 hallucinations differ in being much more vivid, minute, de- 



* V. Kandinsky : Kritische u. Klinische Betrachtungen im Gebiete d. 

 Sinnestauschungen (1885), p. 42. 



