I have proposed the word hallucination” (p. Who would dare to say visions of hearing, visions of taste, visions of smell? … A generic name is needed. Before, hallucinations were only considered in one sensory modality (vision), but Esquirol (1845) combined in his designation experiences from various sensory modalities: “Hallucinations of sight… have been denominated visions. According to Ey (1939), Esquirol brought together psychiatry and the patient with hallucinations. In this article we aim to review the evolution of the term “hallucination” up to present time, as well as its related concepts, such as “pseudohallucination,” “illusion,” and “hallucinosis.”Įsquirol achieved the major theoretical advance on hallucinations, introducing the term to psychiatry. With the medicalization of the term, the semantic nature was lost and hallucinations came to be considered, first, as diseases or independent syndromes and, later on, as symptoms that characterize different diseases ( Berrios, 1996). their content was believed to carry a message for the individual or the world” (p. According to Berrios (1996), “variously named, these experiences were in earlier times culturally integrated and semantically pregnant, i.e. The term was then used to designate organic conditions (afflictions of the cornea and diplopia) and mental disorders (strange noises, premonitions, and appearances Luque and Villagrán, 2000). Only after the seventeenth/eighteenth centuries have hallucinations acquired a scientific/medical sense. Saint Thomas Aquinas established a difference between normal and false perceptions and argued that a vision ( visio) was a natural phenomenon instigated by God or the devil ( Sarbin and Juhasz, 1967). Saint Augustine, for instance, tried to characterize visions in mystical experiences by distinguishing three meanings for the expression videre (latin word for “to see”): corporal (as in the visual experience of the external world through the senses), imaginative (as in the representation of images and objects that have a temporal but not spatial location), and intellectual (as in abstract concepts that lack a spatial and temporal location Sarbin and Juhasz, 1967). Evidence for similar concepts may be found in Christian authors. It may also have originated from the Latin compound ad lucem (ad- next to lucem-light Barcia, 1903). It may have had origin in the Latin word allucinor, allucinaris, used by Cicero, meaning the intent to mislead or equivocate ( Corominas, 1973).
This latter aspect in particular led to the emergence of other related concepts like “pseudohallucination,” “illusion,” and “hallucinosis.” The etymology of the word hallucination is controversial. It is also one of the hardest to define and delimitate from other psychopathological concepts. Hallucination is one of the most relevant symptoms in psychiatry. These and other controversial aspects regarding the evolution of the term hallucination and all its derivative concepts are discussed in this paper. Hallucinosis, first described in the context of alcohol consumption, is generally considered egodystonic, in which insight is preserved. Illusions are unanimously taken as distortions of real objects. The major characteristics that we found associated with pseudohallucinations were “lack of objectivity” and “presence of insight” (differing from hallucinations). Since its introduction the term pseudohallucination has been used with different meanings. The terms pseudohallucination, illusion, and hallucinosis are grafted into the concept of hallucination. More integrated perspectives like those proposed by Alonso Fernandez and Luque, highlights the heterogeneity of hallucinations and the multiplicity of their types and causes. By the twentieth century, some authors maintain that hallucinations are a form of delusion (Ey), while others describe them as a change in perception (Jaspers, Fish). Esquirol favors the intellectual origin, describing them as an involuntary exercise of memory and imagination. By then, a controversy begins on whether hallucinations have a perceptual or intellectual origin. However, the term was only fully integrated in psychiatry by Esquirol in the eighteenth–nineteenth centuries. From mid-seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, they acquire a medical quality in mental and organic illnesses. Prior to the seventeenth century, the experiences we now name hallucinations were valued within a cultural context, they could bring meaning to the subject or the world.
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