Hallucinations Author(S): Ronald K. Siegel Source: Scientific American, Vol

Hallucinations Author(s): Ronald K. Siegel Source: Scientific American, Vol. 237, No. 4 (October 1977), pp. 132-141 Published by: Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24953969 Accessed: 07-10-2017 20:50 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Scientific American This content downloaded from 137.22.17.133 on Sat, 07 Oct 2017 20:50:14 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Hallucinations These false perceptions, which can occur in any ofthe senses, turn out to be much alike from one person to another. Apparently they have their roots in excitations of the central nervous system by Ronald K. Siegel motorist who drives alone at night states of insanity. delirium tremens. such as tunnel, funnel, alley. cone and A in a state of extreme fatigue may drug intoxication. nervous disorders. vessel. The fourth type consisted of spi n well perceive things that are not nightmares. dreams. ecstasies and fevers rals. The form constants were further there: people. animals. vehicles or were all characterized by excitation and characterized by varied and saturated strange forms. Such a percept is charac the production of images from memory colors. intense brightness and symmetri terized as a hallucination. Although the and the imagination. His countryman cal configurations. The visions seemed definition of the word (which comes Jacques Moreau described hallucina to be located at reading distance. They from the Latin hallucinari. meaning to tions as being similar to dreams in which varied gre'atly in apparent size. In gener prate. to dream or to wander in mind) is imagined visual, auditory and tactile al they could not be consciously con far from precise. one that is widely ac stimuli seem to be real. Foretelling what trolled. cepted in psychiatry is: "A false sensory future neurophysiological research Kluver made the crucial observation perception in the absence of an actual would reveal, he maintained that hallu that these form constants appear in a external stimulus. May be induced by cinations resulted from excitation of the wide variety of hallucinatory condi emotional and other factors such as brain. Moreau's technique. which he de tions. He listed a number of the condi drugs. alcohol and stress. May occur in scribed in 1845. was to take hashish. tions. and other investigators have add any of the senses." which put him in a hallucinatory state ed to his list. which now includes falling By this definition it is likely that ev while leaving him able to report his ex asleep. waking up. insulin hypoglyce eryone has had a hallucination at one periences. (Moreau also tried to per mia. the delirium of fever. epilepsy. psy time or another. Lonely explorers. iso suade his medical colleagues and friends chotic episodes. advanced syphilis. sen lated hunters in the Arctic and prisoners to take hashish. His colleagues were hes sory deprivation. photostimulation. elec in dark cells have reported experiencing itant because they did not view the tak trical stimulation. crystal gazing. mi them. Some people seek out the experi ing of hashish as an acceptable form of graineheadaches. dizziness and of course ence by taking hallucinogenic drugs. objective experimentation. The Bohe a variety of drug intoxications. Under the right social circumstances the mian artists and writers of 19th-century Most of the drugs that give rise to perceptions may be regarded as valid. Paris were more receptive. One of them. such imagery are classifed as hallucino Joan of Arc became a saint because of the novelist Theophile Gautier. went on gens. Other drugs and substances can her visions. and the flashes of light per to organize the Club des Haschichins. give rise to similar effects. however. and ceived by the astronauts were taken whose members included Balzac. Bau so most psychoactive compounds (to quite seriously. (They were actually delaire. the younger Dumas and Victor the extent that they cause the mind or cau�ed by cosmic rays.) On the other Hugo. Some of the club members' writ the attention to wander) can be regarded hand. negative evaluations are applied ings testify to the richness of the imag as hallucinogens. In this category are al to similar perceptions by inmates of cor ery induced by hashish.) cohol, carbon dioxide. cocaine. cortisol. rectional institutions. All such reports. In Germany and the U.S. early stu digitalis. scopolamine and even tobacco however. are necessarily subjective. dents of hallucinations followed a simi with a high concentration of nicotine. When one has a hallucination. one does lar course of self-experimentation and so alone. in the privacy of one's mind. focused mainly on visual hallucinations. he form constants appear in the first Do the hallucinations of one person Using mescaline. a hallucinogenic alka Tof two stages of drug-induced imag have anything in common with those of loid derived from the peyote cactus ery. The images of the second stage. another? My colleagues and I in the Lophophora williamsii. Heinrich Klu· which are more complex but can incor Neuropsychiatric Institute of the Uni ver began a series of investigations at the porate the simple constants. include versity of California at Los Angeles University of Chicago in 1926. He re landscapes. faces and familiar objects have attempted to answer the question ported that mescaline-induced imagery and places. The complex images. which by means of experiment. We find that could be observed with the eyes either are perhaps the most dramatic aspect of hallucinations do have a great deal in closed or open and that with the eyes the hallucinatory experience. are usual common. Moreover. the experiments open it was impossible to look at a ly regarded as an activation of images point to underlying mechanisms in the blank wall without seeing it as being already recorded in the memory. central nervous system as the source of a covered with various forms. One would expect the forms and universal phenomenology of hallucina Among these forms Kluver found scenes of complex imagery to be almost tions. four constant types. One he described infinitely diverse. Actually constants ap One of the earliest classifications of with terms such as grating. lattice. fret pear even at this stage. Indeed. a review hallucinations was offered in 1853 by work. filigree. honeycomb and chess of more than 500 hallucinations in Brierre de Boismont of France. He board. A second type resembled cob duced by lysergic acid diethylamide found that hallucinations occurring in webs. A third was described with terms (LSD) revealed that whereas between 62 132 This content downloaded from 137.22.17.133 on Sat, 07 Oct 2017 20:50:14 UTC All use© 1977 subject SCIENTIFIC to http://about.jstor.org/terms AMERICAN, INC and 72 percent of the subjects experi the novelty of the visions. expressing the Our first experiments were designed enced the simple form constants. more view that many hallucinating people are to see if the hallucinatory phenomena I than 79 percent reported quite similar so overwhelmed by the color or bright have described appeared when halluci complex images. They included reli ness of the images that they do not artic nations were induced in untrained sub gious symbols and images (72 percent) ulate the basic forms. It was this inartic jects by drugs. Each subject was given and images of small animals and hu ulateness that challenged KlUver to de either a standard dose of a hallucinogen man beings (49 percent). most of them scribe the simple first stage of hallucina (usually marihuana or its active princi friendly and many in the nature of car tory imagery. The apparent complexity ple. tetrahydrocannabinol) or an inac toons and caricatures. of the second-stage images challenged tive placebo. (The subject did not know Most of the investigators and the sub us to do the same for them. We believed which substance he was receiving.) He jects did not describe the complex imag the study of such phenomena might was then asked to lie on a bed in a light ery in detail. Moreover. before KlUver's point to a common visual imagery un proof and soundproof chamber and to classic work little was said about the ge derlying hallucinations and so might report his experiences. We recorded the ometry of even simple hallucinatory im help us understand the origin of these reports on tape and analyzed them ac ages. KlUver attributed this omission to percepts and related ones. cording to the frequency of different HALLUCINATORY SHAPES AND COLORS are represented in left is carrying a basket of freshly harvested peyote and viewing a this yarn painting made by a member of the Huichol Indian group vision that is exploding with color and streaks and Hashes of light. in Mexico. The picture was made to show visions of the kind experi The peyote cactus is represented at the right. The picture was made enced in hallucination brought on by taking peyote. The Indian at the by putting beeswax on wood and then pressing yarn into the beeswax. This content downloaded from 137.22.17.133 on Sat, 07 Oct 2017 20:50:14 UTC 133 All use© 1977 subject SCIENTIFIC to http://about.jstor.org/terms AMERICAN, INC forms, colors, movements and complex geometric forms in it.

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