- motor hallucination
- The term motor hallucination is indebted to the Latin noun motio, which means movement. It is used as a generic term for a group of motor phenomena exemplified by onomatomania (i.e. compulsive speaking) and the * psychomotor verbal hallucination (i.e. *subvocalization). Although hallucinations are traditionally conceptualized as perceptual phenomena, the German neurologist and psychiatrist Kurt Goldstein (1878-1965) argues that motor phenomena such as compulsive speaking may well be mediated by a similar pathophysiological mechanism, affecting motor rather than sensory cortical areas. As he maintains, "Under the influence of abnormal processes within the 'organ of thought' abnormal speech utterances can be elicited, especially when the excitability of the motorial foci is heightened; for example in certain forms of catatonic speech compulsion or flight of ideas." As Goldstein concludes, "Obsessive speaking thus becomes a process analogous to hallucinations in the motor sphere, a motor hallucination [motorischen Hallucination]." From a slightly different vantage point, the term motor hallucination is sometimes used as a synonym for the term *kinaesthetic hallucination.ReferencesGoldstein, K. (1908). Zur Theorie der Hallucina-tionen. Studien über normale und pathologische Wahrnehmung. Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten, 44, 1036-1106.
Dictionary of Hallucinations. J.D. Blom. 2010.