The Apprehensive Apparition - hallucination

Essay by Anonymous UserCollege, UndergraduateA-, March 1997

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Waking from a frightening dream, hearing noises; how far does it go when your scared and alone. With all the hidden terrors in all world hallucination is far most the worst. One day realizing that your conscience has gotten louder has got to be the most frightening sounds you could ever experience. Hallucination is defined as sensory perception in absence of external stimuli. There are three characteristics: thoughts or memory images, perhaps when they are as vivid and immediate as perceptions, are experienced as if they were perceptions; they are externalized, or projected, being experienced as if they came from outside the person; and the mistaking of imagery for perception is not corrected in the light of the other information available.

Like hallucination, pseudohallucination has been used to describe imagery as vivid and immediate as perception but not mistaken as such. They are more likely to be seen in response to isolation or an intense emotional need: for example, shipwrecked sailors may visualize boats coming to their rescue well before this actually happens.

The fanciful elaboration of perception of external stimuli-for example, faces seen in the fire-is illusion. A patient who suffers from delirium tremens as a result of alcoholism may see such frightening things as red spiders or pink elephants, or they may feel that lice are crawling over their skin, because hallucination although usually visual may be experienced through any of the senses. The imagery of a vision is experienced as if it came from outside, although not from ordinary reality as perception does.

Young children often fail to distinguish between imagery and perception and suppose that what they imagine is external and perceptible to others; but as they grow older, they become better at making the distinction. Adults sometimes fail to make the distinction, especially...