Mental pathology in its relation to normal psychology : a course of lectures delivered in the University of Leipzig / by Gustav Störring ; translated by Thomas Loveday.

Störring, Gustav, 1860-

Date:: 1907

Credit: Mental pathology in its relation to normal psychology : a course of lectures delivered in the University of Leipzig / by Gustav Störring ; translated by Thomas Loveday. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$If hallucinations never occurred except when the eyes are closed, Hoppe’s doctrine would have some claim to a hearing. For the rest, we should then have to abandon the term hallucination, and speak of illusions only ; for, as we shall see, this is the right term to use when the content of an erroneous perception is determined by the quality of a sensation, owing to the sensation being similar to and consequently fusing with an idea. v When supporters of the centripetal theory point to the observed fact that hallucinations often go with peripheral abnormalities in sense-organs, and to Jolly’s experiments with electrical stimuli, we must bear in mind that abnormalities in sense-organs or centripetal sensory tracts are apt to result in heightened cortical irritability, so that it always remains possible they do not do more than contribute in this indirect way to the origin of hallucinations. Moreover, as Hagen * has justly remarked, the attempt to derive hallucinations from this source alone is confronted by the objection that as a rule examination of the eyes and ears of hallucinating persons does not reveal any visible abnormality. [■; On the other hand, cases like those of Uhthoff’s that I quoted prove that anomalies of the sense-organs may produce erroneous perceptions without a relation of similarity between objective and subjective factors being a condition of their fusion, j We shall have to treat these phenomena in more detail by and by. At present I want to say a few words about the argu- ment in favour of the centripetal theory, which is derived from the multiplication of hallucinatory forms when seen through prisms. You may be inclined to think that we have here a striking proof of the dependence of hallucinations on external stimuli. But certain experiments which Bernheim instituted with hysterical patients are a warning to us to be cautious in this connection. I will give you a short excerpt from his account of the experiments, f “ We suggest to our hypnotized subjects that upon waking they will see some object, a light for example, one or two metres in front of them. When wakened they see the light. Then we put a cylinder before their eyes which contains a doubly-refract- ing prism, and which should, therefore, make an object appear * Allge7neine Zeitschrift f Psychiairie, Bd. 25. + De la Suggestion et des Applications a la Therapeutique, pp. 145-8. [I have in the main followed Herter’s translation, Suggestive Therapeutics, 1890.—Tr.]$