Hallucination vs Pseudo Hallucination
What is Hallucination?
Hallucination is one of the most common symptoms in psychiatry. It can be found in many disorders such as schizophrenia or psychosis of mania and depression.
Dr Henry Ey (1973) identified there conditions associated with hallucinations such as:
- “Sensory appearance of the experience”. It can therefore be perceived as an auditory, visual, olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste) or tactile sensation.
- “Conviction of its reality”. A person can therefore believe that the hallucination is real and it will be hard to persuade them otherwise.
- “Absense of real object”. A person may hear something in the absence of any source of noise or sound.
Pseudo Hallucinations
Pseudohallucination (false hallucination) was described by Jasper as vivid sensory images which are different from hallucination as they lack the objectivity and reality of hallucinations. In plain term, the quality of pseudo hallucination is less than hallucinations.
Hare in 1973, emphasized the presence of insight or understanding of the phenomenon as a criteria for pseudo hallucination but this is hardly followed because even psychotic patients’ understanding of hallucinations changes over time and with treatment.
Questions that Psychiatrists ask to differentiate Hallucination vs PseudoHallucination
For hallucinations specific to Schizophrenia, please visit our screening tests page or just click the link here.