Special Kinds of Hallucinations from Fish’s Clinical Psychopathology including functional, reflex extracampine and autoscopic hallucination, and patient’s attitude towards hallucination.

1. SPECIAL KINDS OF HALLUCINATIONS
PRACHI BHAVESH SANGHVI
I M.Sc CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
ST. AGNES CENTER FOR POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
AND RESEACH

2. Special kinds of hallucinations
•Functional hallucination
•Reflex hallucination
•Extracampine hallucination
•Autoscopic hallucination
Patient’s attitude towards hallucination

3. FUNCTIONAL HALLUCINATION
•An external stimulus is necessary to provoke
hallucination, but the normal perception of the stimulus
and the hallucination in the same modality are
experienced simultaneously.
•Patient can readily separate the noise from the voices
and both perceptions are recognized as distinct and real.
•Common in chronic schizophrenia.
•Distinguishing illusion from functional hallucination

4. REFLEX HALLUCINATION
•A hallucinatory form of synaesthesia (a sensory
stimulus in one modality resulting in sensory experience
in another).
•A stimulus in one sensory modality produces a
hallucination in another sense modality.
•These hallucinations do not have much diagnostic
significance.

5. EXTRACAMPINE HALLUCINATION
•The patient has a hallucination which is outside
the limits of the sensory field; outside the visual
field or beyond the range of audibility.
•These hallucinations do not have much
diagnostic significance.
•They can be hypnagogic, organic, schizophrenic
or occur in epilepsy.
•It is quite definitely experienced as a perception
by the patient and not just as a belief or an idea.

6. AUTOSCOPIC HALLUCINATION
•A visual experience where the patient sees an
image of himself in external space viewed from
within their own physical body.
•Kinaesthetic and somatic sensation must also be
present, but disturbance in visual perception is an
essential feature.
•It can occur in normal people when they are
emotionally disturbed, tired or exhausted.
Occasionally, it is a hysterical symptom.

7. •Few schizophrenics have autoscopic
hallucination, but they are more common in
delirious states.
•The organic states more often associated with
autoscopy are epilepsy and focal lesions.
•Also found in drug addicts and chronic
alcoholics.

8. •A few patients suffering from organic
conditions look in the mirror and see no image.
This is called ‘negative autoscopy.’
•In ‘internal autoscopy,’ the patient sees his
own internal organs.

9. PATIENT’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS HALLUCINATIONS
•The patient is usually terrified by the visual
hallucinations and may try desperately to get
away from them.
•Many patients feel threatened and are generally
suspicious.
•Depressed patients often hear voices abusing
them or telling them to kill themselves.

10. •The onset of voices in acute schizophrenia is often
very frightening and the patient, at times, may attack
the person he believes to be their source.
•Those with chronic schizophrenia on the other hand
are often not troubled by the voices and may treat
them as acquaintances, but a few patients complain
bitterly about them.
•Patients who have insight may deny hallucinations,
since they know this is an abnormal feature.

11. REFERENCES
• Hamilton M. (1994). Fish’s Clinical Psychopathology.
Varghese Publishing House, Bombay.
• Oyebode F. (2010). Sims’ Symptoms in the Mind; An
Introduction to Descriptive Psychopathology.
Rajkamal Electric Press, Kundli.