TYPES OF HALLUCINATIONS AND THEIR EFFECTS - ECONOMÍA - 2024

The hallucinations are a sensory perception of a nonexistent reality and conceived as a real stimulus. This type of psychopathological phenomenon is not only suffered by people who suffer from some type of mental disorder, but it is something more common than we think.

Somatic, kinesthetic, visual, auditory, negative hallucinations, delusions… Throughout this article we are going to explain up to 12 types of hallucinations that, in the most extreme cases, can be very harmful to your mental health.

It is necessary to know that not all hallucinations are perceived as real, in some cases, the person knows perfectly that it is the product of their own mind, so they do not interfere at a personal, work or social level.

Therefore, the conviction of reality or not of said hallucination will be a key factor to take into account when making a possible diagnosis of mental disorder.

What is a hallucination?

Everyone at some point when talking about hallucinations, we have linked him to a "crazy" or "paranoid" person who claims to see or hear things that he can only experience. But they not only occur in people with mental disorders or thought disorders, but healthy people can also experience them under certain situations.

A hallucination can be defined as:

a) An experience similar to perception, which occurs in the absence of the appropriate stimulus.

b) That it has all the force and impact of a real experience and

c) It cannot be voluntarily controlled by the one who experiences it.

Types of hallucinations

Hallucinations are classified depending on their complexity, their content or themes they deal with, and the sensory modality to which they belong.

It should be noted that the less the hallucinations are formed, the more likely they are due to neurological or biochemical causes and the less likely they are to mental disorders, such as schizophrenia.

As for the content or topics on which hallucinations can deal, these can be endless: fear, memories, religious content…

Regarding the sensory modality, hallucinations can be visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, somatic, etc. The most frequent being the auditory and visual type.

1- auditory hallucinations

The most frequent. There are of various types and characteristics. Among them we can have some simple ones, called acoasmas that appear in the form of beeps, murmurs, bells etc. or more complex hallucinations, or also called phonemes, where people often hear words or voices with some meaning.

A variant of this is the phenomenon called "thought echo", where the patient hears his own thoughts aloud as he thinks them.

It is also typical in some patients to hear voices that speak to them in the second or third person. In people with schizophrenia it usually appears quite a bit.

2- visual hallucinations

This type of hallucination can range from flashes of light (also called photons), to scenes or human figures.

A variety of this type, although it is not very common, are autoscopies. These consist of seeing yourself reflected in a glass but with a gelatinous appearance or, on the contrary, not seeing yourself reflected in the mirror as if it were a vampire.

Another type of visual hallucination, which would have no root with mental problems, is alcoholic hallucinosis. This is characterized by the appearance of unreal entities (objects, animals, people) in the mind of those who have ingested a high concentration of alcohol.

3- olfactory hallucinations

These are not usually very frequent, normally whoever suffers them usually refers to them as unpleasant odors, or for example, feeling that they are being poisoned.

4- taste hallucinations

Those who present this type of hallucination, refer to them as having a taste of rotten or excrement, being quite unpleasant. It is very typical in cases of depression.

5- Tactile or haptic hallucinations

Among them there are different types.

• Thermal, where unreal sensations of cold or heat occur
• Water or perception of flow, such as feeling that your chest is full of water
• Paresthesia or tingling. It could include formication delirium, which would be feeling like small insects move across the skin.

This last type of hallucinations is usually very characteristic in those who suffer from alcohol withdrawal syndrome or cocaine psychosis.

6- somatic hallucinations

Or sensations that come from the body itself, as if these were totally real. An example would be feeling that your body is empty, noticing that your genitals are reduced, experiencing that you have organs made of gold, etc.

7- kinesthetic hallucinations

In this type of hallucinations, the subject believes that some parts of the body are moving, when in reality they are not. It usually appears occasionally in patients with Parkinson's.

Variants of hallucinations

In addition to the different types of hallucinations that we have seen, there are other variants that do not consider hallucinations because the person is aware that they are not real.

8- Pseudalucination

In pseudo-hallucination, a clear conviction is not given about the reality of the experience, that is, he doubts the experience and attributes it to his own mind.

An example would be the hallucination of widowhood, which consists of believing that you have seen or heard your wife or husband, but the person who feels it knows perfectly well that it is not true.

9- functional hallucination

In this case, the stimulus that triggers the hallucination is perceived by the same sensory modality. For example: listening to your dog when you hear a specific song.

10- reflex hallucination

Of all the hallucinations, this is one of the ones that surprised me the most when I met her. A real stimulus, belonging to a sensory modality, activates another hallucination in a different modality. For example: feeling that you are pinched when you pass a person.

11- negative hallucination

It consists of not perceiving something that does exist, quite the opposite of the others. Although some authors believe that it has more to do with suggestion.

12- Extracampine hallucination

Something is perceived that is out of our field of vision. For example: hearing voices from a French town, when the one who perceives them lives in Seville.

Pseudo-hallucinations

Finally, we have the pseudo-hallucinations or anomalous images. These usually occur in the absence of the stimulus that caused them. Some examples are:

Hypnopomic or hypnagogic images

The hypnopomics are related to the images that appear on awakening, while the hypnagogic ones would be related to the phenomena that appear in the numbness. An example of hypnagogic would be to feel that you fall into the void.

Hallucinoid images

These images are not produced by any stimulus and the subject does not conceive of them as real.

They usually occur in the black space of the eyes or also known as the Müller effect.

Mnemic images

They are images of our memories that can be seen in a transformed way. Inside we would have eidetic images, also known as a "sensory recall". For example, what the eidetic child would do would be to focus her attention on a flat surface, imagining an object that she had previously perceived.

Consecutive images or post-images

These types of images usually appear when there is excessive sensory stimulation prior to the experience. An example would be to look at a waterfall for a few seconds and see how it descends, to later experience the opposite movement.

Parasitic images

They usually occur when the subject does not focus on them and disappear when he focuses on them.