Hallucinations and Hallucinogens: Psychopathology or Wisdom? (original) (raw)
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The Cognitive Value of Hallucinations
2015
With beginnings probably dating back to the end of the Middle Palaeolithic period, shamanism seems to be predominantly connected with the use of hallucinogenic agents and the experiences resulting therefrom. For this reason it is worth asking how the shamanistic cultural complex could function over such a long period of time in adaptive terms if the substance of its practice and ideology included the processing of information based on hallucinations. In the light of contemporary nomenclature, the latter are understood as inadequate erroneous perceptions. Accepting such a concept of hallucinations, it is possible to explain the long currency of shamanism on the basis of evolutionary cognitive error management theory, costly signalling theory, or evolutionary psychiatric group-splitting theory. However, the dominant approach to the phenomenon of hallucination may be questioned, and it is conceivable that at least some of its contents constitute a mediated projection of subliminal percepts preceding an experience of hallucinations or co-occurring with them. Transformations of hallucinations preceding their entry to the field of consciousness may be governed by the rules of association described by Herbert Silberer's theory of self-symbolisation and those brought to light by such researchers on subliminal perception as Otto Pötzl, Charles Fisher, or Norman Dixon. From this new perspective, a new definition of hallucination must be developed-a definition that will take the actual cognitive value of this phenomenon into consideration and be more adequate for providing a description of the full cognitive dynamics of the shamanistic complex.
Culture and hallucinations: overview and future directions
Schizophrenia bulletin, 2014
A number of studies have explored hallucinations as complex experiences involving interactions between psychological, biological, and environmental factors and mechanisms. Nevertheless, relatively little attention has focused on the role of culture in shaping hallucinations. This article reviews the published research, drawing on the expertise of both anthropologists and psychologists. We argue that the extant body of work suggests that culture does indeed have a significant impact on the experience, understanding, and labeling of hallucinations and that there may be important theoretical and clinical consequences of that observation. We find that culture can affect what is identified as a hallucination, that there are different patterns of hallucination among the clinical and nonclinical populations, that hallucinations are often culturally meaningful, that hallucinations occur at different rates in different settings; that culture affects the meaning and characteristics of halluci...
Nous commencerons par présenter les principales théories philosophiques contemporaines de la perception et les différentes manières dont elles entendent résoudre le problème posé par l'argument de l'hallucination. Nous tenterons de montrer que ces théories s'avèrent insatisfaisantes en ce qu'elles oublient un ingrédient essentiel des expériences hallucinatoires : le fait que les hallucinations possèdent un sens de réalité variable (quand on les éprouve, on a l'impression qu'elles sont plus ou moins réelles). Par ailleurs, ces théories classiques restent limitées par le fait qu'elles s'en tiennent le plus souvent à l'étude de cas hallucinatoires qui ne sont que de pures expériences de pensée et négligent les expériences hallucinatoires réellement éprouvées par les gens. Parmi toutes les expériences hallucinatoires que les gens vivent réellement, nous nous focaliserons ici en particulier sur les expériences hallucinogènes (les hallucinations induites par des psychotropes). La distinction entre hallucinogènes sérotoninergiques (e.g., LSD, mescaline, champignons psilocybes, DMT, etc.) et anti-cholinergiques (e.g., Ditran, Datura, Duboisia, mandragore, etc.) jouera un rôle pivot dans nos analyses. Nous montrerons comment la prise en compte des expériences hallucinogènes et du sens de réalité dans l'analyse des hallucinations invite à repenser à nouveaux frais les problèmes et les théories classiques de la philosophie de la perception. Notre exploration du lien entre hallucination et sens de réalité nous conduira à aller bien au-delà de seules considérations philosophiques pour nous aventurer sur le terrain de l'anthropologie ainsi que de la neurobiologie. Cela nous permettra notamment d'étudier les rapports complexes et bidirectionnels entre processus pharmacologiques et processus culturels (expertise, rituels, symboles, etc.). L'exploration de la neurobiologie des expériences hallucinogènes se fera le plus souvent au sein d'un cadre bayésien inspiré par la théorie du codage prédictif et par le principe de l'énergie libre de Friston. Quant à l'exploration des données anthropologiques, elle se focalisera pour l'essentiel sur l'ethnographie amazonienne et notamment sur le chamanisme végétaliste pano.
Transcultural Psychiatry, 2021
Although the effects of so-called "psychedelic" or "hallucinogenic" substances are known for their strong conditionality on context and the culturalist approach of hallucinations has won the favor of anthropologists, the vectors by which the features of visual and auditory imagery are structured by social context have been so far little explored. Using ethnographic data collected in a shamanic center of the Peruvian Amazon and an anthropological approach dialoguing with phenomenology and recent models of cognition of Bayesian inspiration, I draw here some leads in order to shed light on the nature of these dynamics that I call "socialization of hallucinations". Distinguishing two levels of socialization of hallucinations, I argue that cultural background and social interactions not only organize the relationship to the hallucinogenic experience, but also to its very phenomenological content. I account for the underpinnings of the socialization of hallucinations proposing candidate factors as the education of attention, the categorization of perceptions and the shaping of emotions and expectations. Considering psychedelic experiences in the light of their noetic properties and cognitive penetrability debates, I show that they are powerful vectors of cultural transmission. I question the ethical stakes of these observations, at a time when the use of psychedelic is becoming increasingly popular in the global North. I finally emphasize the importance of better understanding the extrapharmacological factors of the psychedelic experience and its subjective implications, and sketch out the basis for an interdisciplinary methodology in order to do so.
Hallucinations and Phenomenal Consciousness
The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology, 2019
This chapter examines whether hallucinations are related to the problem of phenomenal consciousness and how historical contributions to the phenomenology of hallucinations, notably the Early Heidelberg School (1909–1932), shed light on hallucinations in schizophrenia. We focus specifically on Mayer-Gross, who in his phenomenological analysis of hallucinations during psychosis, drew from studies conducted with colleagues in Heidelberg: 1. Hypnagogic experiences (i.e., between waking and sleep); 2. Mescaline as a model-psychosis in the 1920’s with particular relationship to the self-disturbances; 3. Detailed accounts by persons with schizophrenia. In heated debates with colleagues (Berze, Jaspers, C. Schneider, Schröder, Specht, Wernicke) Mayer-Gross concluded that hallucinations in schizophrenia may be considered part of the self-disturbances (later contributing to K. Schneider’s First Rank Symptoms). Shifts in the organization of consciousness play a role. However, hallucinations de...
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences, 2016
Prevalence of hallucinations and their pathological associations in the general population
Psychiatry Research, 2000
Hallucinations are perceptual phenomena involved in many fields of pathology. Although clinically widely explored, studies in the general population of these phenomena are scant. This issue was investigated using representative samples of the non-institutionalized general population of the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy Ž . aged 15 years or over N s 13 057 . These surveys were conducted by telephone and explored mental disorders and Ž hallucinations visual, auditory, olfactory, haptic and gustatory hallucinations, out-of-body experiences, hypnagogic . Ž and hypnopompic hallucinations . Overall, 38.7% of the sample reported hallucinatory experiences 19.6% less than . once in a month; 6.4% monthly; 2.7% once a week; and 2.4% more than once a week . These hallucinations Ž . Ž . Ž occurred, 1 At sleep onset hypnagogic hallucinations 24.8% andror upon awakening hypnopompic hallucinations . 6.6% , without relationship to a specific pathology in more than half of the cases; frightening hallucinations were Ž . more often the expression of sleep or mental disorders such as narcolepsy, OSAS or anxiety disorders. 2 During the Ž . Ž . daytime and reported by 27% of the sample: visual prevalence of 3.2% and auditory 0.6% hallucinations were Ž strongly related to a psychotic pathology respective OR of 6.6 and 5.1 with a conservative estimate of the lifetime . Ž . prevalence of psychotic disorders in this sample of 0.5% ; and to anxiety respective OR of 5.0 and 9.1 . Haptic Ž . hallucinations were reported by 3.1% with current use of drugs as the highest risk factor ORs 9.8 . In conclusion, the prevalence of hallucinations in the general population is not negligible. Daytime visual and auditory hallucinations are associated with a greater risk of psychiatric disorders. The other daytime sensory hallucinations are more related to an organic or a toxic disorder. ᮊ M.M. Ohayon . 0165-1781r00r$ -see front matter ᮊ 2000 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. Ž . PII: S 0 1 6 5 -1 7 8 1 0 0 0 0 2 2 7 -4 ( ) M.M. Ohayon r Psychiatry Research 97 2000 153᎐164 154