hallucinations and psychoanalysis

[gib65]

In some of the early literature on psychoanalysis, there are reports of patients having hallucinations of one kind or another (vidual, auditory, etc.), and the analysis is that these hallucination symbolically represent repressed content in the unconscious.

 

A lot of psychoanalysis has been discredited today, but I'm wondering if there's still anything to this. Can hallucinations carry any symbolic significance, or are they more or less random?

[iNow]

The symbolism of hallucinations has not been discredited. The issue is that it's incredibly subjective, and does not lend to testable predictions nor consistent applications.

 

If I tell you I had a dream/hallucination/vision about a giant black bird, that could mean that death is coming, it could mean that I'd been studying kung fu bird katas, it could mean that my favorite garden patch had just been devastated by a pack of black birds, it could mean I just watched an Alfred Hitchcock movie, it could mean just about anything ad infinitum.

 

 

The symbolic significance is what you make of it... very subjective. To some people a burn on a Dorito chip that looks like a face is symbolically significant, while to others it just means there was a blip during the cooking process.

 

 

Why do you ask?

[dichotomy]

I’ve only hallucinated heavily once on good old magic mushrooms. I didn’t think anything more of it than being a slightly scary & interesting distortion of my senses. It sort of proved to me that the senses in good working order are very critical to our long term survival.

 

It’s my opinion that dreams do have significance, but I also believe that they can only be interpreted correctly, with some effort, by the dreamer him/herself. Hallucinations don't seem to have any significance other than telling you that you have just poisoned yourself, or that you are unwell at that time, IMO.

[gib65]

Why do you ask?

 

I was just wondering if psychoanalysts have any right to interpret hallucinations in a symbolic way. At first, I would think a hallucination is just a chemical imbalance, and if the right chemicals bind to the right neural receptors, one could hallucinate anything. But even a chemical imbalance doesn't mean there is no symbolic significance. A chemical imbalance might only set the stage for hallucination to occur, but the content of those hallucinations might still be influenced by unconscious or personal factors.

[iNow]

I see your point, but "right" in this case is pretty subjective. Also, psychoanalysts do much more than try to interpret symbols. They try to arrive at the root of the neuroses and heal that root, not just the symptoms.

 

I have to pivot back to my previous post, though, where I reminded you that significance is subjective... it's what you make of it.

 

If you think it's significant, then it is. Are you questioning something which has been said to you by a trained professional somewhere, perhaps?

[stevo247]

I work as a counselor with many schizophrenic clients. Contrary to what one might think, visual hallucinations are very rare. Auditory hallucinations are common however. The nature of the “voices” seem to be either derogatory to the sufferer, for example “you’re stupid, you’re a good for nothing”, or they provide a very funny social commentary. The “voices” can also make commands like “touch that womans breast, c’mon do it!”. The word schizophrenia, literally means “split mind”. It doesn’t mean split personality or multiple personality. The split has more to do with self perception. There’s a split in the sense of what constitutes oneself.

 

Personally, I’ve never seen an hallucination. I did however, in my foolish youth, do 4 1/2 hits of a drug called “orange barrel” and for a short time I was lost in a kaleidoscope. But I heroically found my way, discovering that I was in fact, only in the 7-11 convenience store. Do you have any idea how many colors there are in a 7-11? I had to get out of there. Too intense. So we went to a quiet bar, calmed down a little, and returned to casually reading peoples minds.

 

I remember my sister telling me about a long road trip she took one time, and she was extremely sleep deprived. She told me that on the side of the highway she saw (hallucinated) a giant Paul Bunyon character swinging an axe onto the highway. She said she remembered having to slow the car down and then speed up so that her car would avoid the next strike of the axe. We later discovered that there really is a giant Paul Bunyon statue on the side of the road. He doesn’t take swings at passing cars however.

 

I think that hallucinations are often times “misperceptions”. For example, a bag blows across the road and “it looked like a dog”.

 

In terms of psychoanalysis, you may be referring to the symbolism within dreams rather than hallucinations. I think the idea is that dreams are driven by the unconscious and there may be clues to the unconscious within the symbolism of dreams. I don’t know much about it though. I imagine that a dream about a pack of wild dogs attacking your genitals might be indicative of a castration anxiety.