perceptualization of the concept

   Perceptualization of the concept is the name of a hypothetical model for the mediation of hallucinations which utilizes the general idea that hallucinations are transformations of thoughts. The French psychologist Louis-Françisque Lélut (1804-1877) has been credited with preluding on this model when he wrote that "the hallucination is the transformation of a thought into a sensation." The Italian-American psychiatrist Silvano Arieti (1914-1981), whose work focuses on the non-biological etiology of*schizophrenia, wrote about perceptualization of the concept: "In the light of our general interpretation of the schizophrenic process, it is not difficult to understand hallucinations. They were originally thoughts or images that have changed into perceptions. The level of perception is phylogeneti-cally and ontogenetically lower than the levels of verbal thought, and lower even than the level of images. Images, stored in our memory, may be used by hallucinations, but they are reproduced with the modalities of perception... It seems useless, therefore, to continue to argue whether hallucinations are intensified images or perceptions. They are mental processes, usually occurring at higher levels of integration, which use some of the mechanisms of perceptions, although they do not originate from the peripheral sense organs." Today the notion of perceptualization of the concept is rarely used, although the process to which it refers features in various explanatory models of hallucinatory activity, notably the * inner speech model of verbal auditory hallucinations.

   References

   Arieti, S. (1974). Interpretation of schizophrenia. Second edition, completely revised and expanded. New York, NY: Basic Books.

   Lélut, L.F. (1846). De l'amulette de Pascal pour servir à l'histoire des hallucinations. Paris: J.B. Baillière.