![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A book on hallucinations which are not caused by schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. (It also doesn’t deal much with culturally normal hallucinations, which is too bad.) Hallucinations – sensory perceptions which occur during waking and are not based on consensus reality - are surprisingly common, and include many experiences which probably most people don’t think to define as hallucinatory.
While drifting off to sleep, with my eyes closed, I often see kaleidoscope-like geometric patterns, faces (often grotesque or witch-like), and occasionally swarming insects. They are not dreams, are not perceived as being part of reality or projected into the real visual field, and do not have emotional connotations. I always assumed they were caused by going from visual perception to blank darkness while drifting toward sleep: a sort of meditative optical illusion/visual imagination.
They are called hypnogogic hallucinations and are extremely common, and the particular things I see are commonly seen, along with other stereotyped visuals. (“Stereotyped” as in common to people who experience the phenomenon, as opposed to “unique.”) They are caused, in simple terms, by the visual centers of the brain “idling” before sleep.
Hypnopompic hallucinations are less common, and are more vivid, often briefly perceived as real, often frightening illusions which occur upon waking from sleep. I've had those too, thankfully only a few times; mine were quite unpleasant, full-sensory illusions of being entombed in stone. They were not nightmares, though; I could also see my real surroundings. Once someone in the room with me verified that I had my eyes wide open and could track movement and respond to voices.
I have also sometimes, while wide awake, heard my name being called, when no one is there or when nobody called it. This is also extremely common. People in dangerous situations often hear voices giving helpful commands or suggestions; grieving people often see or hear their loved ones. These phenomena are common and “normal.”
I wish Sacks had analyzed those situations more in neurological terms, because I find that fascinating. The main theory he suggests, regarding auditory hallucinations in general, is that they’re a glitch caused by the brain failing to recognize its own thoughts. Another possibility is that people become consciously aware of the non-verbal stream of consciousness beneath their articulated thoughts, and perceive it as coming from the outside.
Sacks covers a number of hallucinatory experiences caused by neurological conditions, such as Charles Bonnet Syndrome, in which blind people hallucinate certain types of sights. Also, in a fairly funny chapter, his own youthful drug use.
The non-psychotic hallucinations are typically either never experienced as “real,” or are easily believed to be unreal once someone explains that they aren’t real, or are understood to not be real once they’re over. This is quite different from psychotic disorder-type hallucinations, which are often believed to be real, even when they end. (A person with PTSD may hallucinate, but they typically either always know the hallucination isn’t real, or, as in the case with flashbacks, figure it out in retrospect.) Regarding culturally normal hallucinations like ghosts, people may believe that they did literally see a spirit, but they also regard it as a spirit – a visitor from another realm. That’s a different experience from literally believing that Abraham Lincoln is living in your guest bedroom. (To avoid wank, let’s assume that I am only discussing those perceptions of spirits, God, etc, when they really are hallucinated and not objectively real.)
Hallucinations without accompanying delusions don’t usually cause major life problems for people. They are not “crazy,” though they might worry that they are. Delusions seem to be what cause the life problems.
The book is well-written and intriguing, as one would expect from Sacks, but more descriptive than analytical. Some types of hallucinations, particularly visual ones with a clear-cut neurological basis such as migraine auras, are explained in neurological terms, but others are simply described. The descriptions are quite evocative and the material is fascinating, but I would have liked more neurological speculation, especially on why certain situations or conditions create certain types of hallucinations, like fever deliriums causing distorted perceptions of size, which are almost invariably perceived as unpleasant or threatening.
I also wish he’d covered auditory hallucinations in more depth. At times he speculated on historical figures who might have heard voices. The problem is, many people write about the simple perception of their own thoughts in voice-like terms, so it’s very hard to tell whether someone literally meant they heard a voice, or only that their thoughts were so vivid that they seemed voice-like. It seems entirely possible, too, that two different people might have a neurologically identical experience, but one might attribute it to an outside voice and one to distinctive inner thoughts.
Please discuss your own experiences of and theories on hallucinations, if you wish.
Hallucinations
While drifting off to sleep, with my eyes closed, I often see kaleidoscope-like geometric patterns, faces (often grotesque or witch-like), and occasionally swarming insects. They are not dreams, are not perceived as being part of reality or projected into the real visual field, and do not have emotional connotations. I always assumed they were caused by going from visual perception to blank darkness while drifting toward sleep: a sort of meditative optical illusion/visual imagination.
They are called hypnogogic hallucinations and are extremely common, and the particular things I see are commonly seen, along with other stereotyped visuals. (“Stereotyped” as in common to people who experience the phenomenon, as opposed to “unique.”) They are caused, in simple terms, by the visual centers of the brain “idling” before sleep.
Hypnopompic hallucinations are less common, and are more vivid, often briefly perceived as real, often frightening illusions which occur upon waking from sleep. I've had those too, thankfully only a few times; mine were quite unpleasant, full-sensory illusions of being entombed in stone. They were not nightmares, though; I could also see my real surroundings. Once someone in the room with me verified that I had my eyes wide open and could track movement and respond to voices.
I have also sometimes, while wide awake, heard my name being called, when no one is there or when nobody called it. This is also extremely common. People in dangerous situations often hear voices giving helpful commands or suggestions; grieving people often see or hear their loved ones. These phenomena are common and “normal.”
I wish Sacks had analyzed those situations more in neurological terms, because I find that fascinating. The main theory he suggests, regarding auditory hallucinations in general, is that they’re a glitch caused by the brain failing to recognize its own thoughts. Another possibility is that people become consciously aware of the non-verbal stream of consciousness beneath their articulated thoughts, and perceive it as coming from the outside.
Sacks covers a number of hallucinatory experiences caused by neurological conditions, such as Charles Bonnet Syndrome, in which blind people hallucinate certain types of sights. Also, in a fairly funny chapter, his own youthful drug use.
The non-psychotic hallucinations are typically either never experienced as “real,” or are easily believed to be unreal once someone explains that they aren’t real, or are understood to not be real once they’re over. This is quite different from psychotic disorder-type hallucinations, which are often believed to be real, even when they end. (A person with PTSD may hallucinate, but they typically either always know the hallucination isn’t real, or, as in the case with flashbacks, figure it out in retrospect.) Regarding culturally normal hallucinations like ghosts, people may believe that they did literally see a spirit, but they also regard it as a spirit – a visitor from another realm. That’s a different experience from literally believing that Abraham Lincoln is living in your guest bedroom. (To avoid wank, let’s assume that I am only discussing those perceptions of spirits, God, etc, when they really are hallucinated and not objectively real.)
Hallucinations without accompanying delusions don’t usually cause major life problems for people. They are not “crazy,” though they might worry that they are. Delusions seem to be what cause the life problems.
The book is well-written and intriguing, as one would expect from Sacks, but more descriptive than analytical. Some types of hallucinations, particularly visual ones with a clear-cut neurological basis such as migraine auras, are explained in neurological terms, but others are simply described. The descriptions are quite evocative and the material is fascinating, but I would have liked more neurological speculation, especially on why certain situations or conditions create certain types of hallucinations, like fever deliriums causing distorted perceptions of size, which are almost invariably perceived as unpleasant or threatening.
I also wish he’d covered auditory hallucinations in more depth. At times he speculated on historical figures who might have heard voices. The problem is, many people write about the simple perception of their own thoughts in voice-like terms, so it’s very hard to tell whether someone literally meant they heard a voice, or only that their thoughts were so vivid that they seemed voice-like. It seems entirely possible, too, that two different people might have a neurologically identical experience, but one might attribute it to an outside voice and one to distinctive inner thoughts.
Please discuss your own experiences of and theories on hallucinations, if you wish.
Hallucinations
From:
no subject
(Yes, that is an actual example.)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I'm also curious about the line between dreams and hallucinations! Mostly because if I'm really tired, I'll start seeing things at times, but I have always thought that it was my slipping off into sleep.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
The sleep-related hallucinations occur during a waking but edging into sleep state. If you're fully asleep, they're dreams and involve a different sort of brain activity.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I have a theory that my auditory hallucinations have to do with one of the functions that's been posited for sleep: long-term memory formation. I was in college 10 years ago, so this theory could be way out of date. But I suspect my brain is taking the most salient input it received during the day, and re-traveling those neural pathways to reinforce them into long-term memory.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
And the same for auditory ones - if it's been a particularly full day, I'll get the voices as I drift to sleep. I may or may not be able to identify who's speaking (if I can it will be people I've been with, or TV characters I've been doing a marathon of...), but I can usually focus in on the words. Which on the whole tend to be fairly nonsensical, but just enough the sensical side of word salad to be pleasant to listen to while dropping off.
The only hypnopompic dream I remember was waking up once (when my bed was against the wall) and seeing an arm lying there between me and the wall.
From:
no subject
The auditory ones are usually in the voices of people I've heard in real life that day (whether friends or strangers on public transport) but not saying things they actually said, or often even anything comprehensible.
I get auditory hypnogogia markedly more often and longer if I've had a very people-heavy day. I talked with my psychiatrist about that, and he confirmed that that's because the auditory hallucinations while I go to sleep really are like the Tetris effect: my brain is practising a skill it was working on that day (talking with people) in the moments before sleep. It's part of the learning process.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I can only recall one auditory hallucination, during a ballet recital in my early teens, when I very clearly heard an adult voice near me saying, "Well, she's not very good!" I realized later that there was no one anywhere near me whose voice I could possibly have heard so loudly and clearly (not to mention, not many adults would so cheerfully trash a young girl in public). It's funny, because it's far from the most stressful situation I've been in, but apparently the only one where the conditions were exactly right to produce an auditory hallucination.
A very, very few times in my life I've had experiences which I conceptualize as hearing from God. These I don't experience as an external voice, but as, if this makes sense, an external thought -- a thought that comes very suddenly and directly into my mind and doesn't *feel* like it comes from me. Obviously, some part of my mind slightly different than my normal articulated thought process is involved; but because of my particular belief system, I do have some lingering sense that something not-me is also involved. Not in any way provable or necessary, of course, and it can easily be neurologically accounted for without a God-hypothesis. (For the record, on the very few occasions this has happened, it has been offering reassurance of a very deep kind.)
From:
no subject
I've read a fair amount on the sense of divine presence. Interestingly enough, people using the same research to argue for or against the existence of God. Certain brain activity in certain regions will give people a feeling of divine presence. But whether that means that the sense is merely neurons firing, or whether the neurons exist so that people have the capability of sensing God, is, of course, unanswerable. Like a lot of neurological research, it explains the "how" but not the "why."
From:
no subject
I am, in general, very resistant to the idea that God communicates with people personally and directly, and nothing in my belief system requires that idea to be true, and yet somehow I can't discount those few experiences entirely.
From:
no subject
Yes, my one experience along those lines was exactly like that: it was as if I suddenly knew something that I hadn't known before, and the entire thought arrived in one instant, complete and whole. It grew and unfolded as I cognitively explored it, but I had the sensation that it was just my understanding that was growing and changing -- all the knowledge itself had come at once.
From:
no subject
I don't have the hypnogogic hallucinations so much -- I get auditory stuff, especially as I'm falling asleep: I think people are calling my name, hear music, think I overhear conversations. There was one frightening thing where I kept waking up, thinking I heard a BANG. Although it's benign, it's called "exploding head syndrome" -- lovely! It went away after a while. I think it's related to stress, migraines, whatever. Sometimes when I wake up I think I hear someone moving around in the room, or calling my name, but that's less common. Sometimes I do get visual stuff, but it's always very muddy and unclear, and usually unpleasant. They're more annoying than anything else.
Does he talk about migraine 'hallucinations'? That was in his book on migraines -- he talks about how maybe saints were seeing migraine paintings, has migraineur artwork, &c. (I find it very disturbing -- I can't look at it for more than a few seconds, or it starts to cause a headache.) I remember the first time I saw the floating glowy checkerboard that's the classic symptom of migraine, in my twenties (in graduate school at the library). I had no fucking idea what it was and thought I was having a stroke. (Interestingly enough some of the doodles I did as an adolescent look just like some migraine art -- spiky, sharp, disconnected little scotoma-like things -- altho it wasn't conscious at all.)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Gahh. One of my fellow migraineurs sent me a link once (haha convincing) about how migraines may actually damage the brain? and be related to seizures? Takes a bit of the fun out of the light show.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
My first striking experience of hallucination wasn't mine--my cousin and I were keeping an eye on her father and a very young relative, and her father told the little boy to gather up the toys he'd left under the table. There were some; when he was directed in some detail to get the frog he'd missed, however, we blinked. At the time my uncle was fairly heavily medicated for complications from Parkinson's (and in his seventies), but he'd seemed lucid till then. Afterwards his physical decline sped up, too.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
And one year, when I was particularly exhausted at midnight mass, I had the sensation of being separated from my own body, and heard choirs of angels singing above the organ music. Which was both alarming and kind of cool - if one must have hallucinations, I'm all in favour of seasonally appropriate ones!
Interestingly, after a few moments, I was able to consciously decide that I liked angelic choirs in my midnight mass, and consequently heard them above all the organ solos for the rest of the night. I have no idea what that was about or how I did it - I have a very good auditory imagination, and if I choose, I can 'hear' in my head specific voices singing specific songs, even if those people have not sung those songs in my hearing, but this definitely felt as though the input was external.
Catherine
From:
no subject
I had visual hallucinations of light and movement when I woke up from an hour's nap after 72 hours awake, but it was lovely, not scary.
Hmm, I'm not sure if this one is a hallucination or what: when I am very surprised, startled awake, or sometimes eat after I've been very hungry, I feel like a surface of sensation travels through me and reflects. A sort of odd sensation that starts at my heart, travels to my left, bounces, and moves across my body to the right, for example. I assumed it was neurochemical, adrenaline shooting through my blood and the sensation being refined a bit into a pattern by my head, but maybe it's just all whichever part of my brain synthesizing a false data on a check in.
From:
no subject
I do sometimes hear things - my children calling for me when they are not, usually - but I think that's less a true hallucination than my brain being paranoid. (Mostly it happens while I am showering, thus: "Is that them crying? That could be crying. Although if it were a real cry it would be much louder." Etc.)
From:
no subject
I've had something a bit like that happen to me: I kept thinking my phone was ringing just out of my range of hearing. I changed my ringtone to a tune that I was unlikely to mistake any other background sound for, and it stopped happening. Needless to say, I have phone anxiety.
I would imagine that'd be a lot more likely to happen with young children, and particularly if you were anxious about taking a shower or something like that, and of course you can't train them to cry a different tune.
From:
no subject
...although they're 2 and 4, maybe they are old enough to train them to do something specific that isn't crying when they need me. Hmm.
From:
no subject
Oh, I get that too -- what is it, the hypnogagic jerk? Myoclonic jerk? (I hate waking up with a jerk....haha.) The feeling I'm falling will wake me up with a gasp, or I'll actually dream I'm on a staircase and missed a step and am falling down - which I guess is my brain trying to process the feeling? Sometimes it happens _right_ as I'm drifting off to sleep.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I hate these. I always get a major adrenaline rush too.
From:
no subject