psychosensorial hallucination

   The notion of the hallucination psycho-sensorielle was proposed in 1846 by the French alienist Jules Gabriel François Baillarger (1806-1891) to the French Academy of Medicine. Baillarger used the term to denote a type of hallucination which arises from the interplay between the sense organs and the imagination, but which is mediated primarily by the sense organs. Later theFrenchpsychologist AlfredBinet (1857-1911) proposed the term *cerebro-sensorial hallucination to denote this class of hallucinations. Both terms have been used in opposition to the expression * psychic hallucination (hallucination psychique), which refers to a type of hallucination that is deemed to be mediated primarily by mental faculties such as memory and imagination. The notion of psychosensorial hallucinations fits in with the * centripetal theory of hallucinatory activity, which emphasizes the role of the sense organs and the peripheral nervous system in the mediation of hallucinations. At the time, Bail-larger's distinction between psychosensorial and psychic hallucinations was considered an eminent conceptual improvement over purportedly 'pure' centripetal theories such as those of the Swiss physiologist Johann Ignaz Hoppe (18111891) and Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), Charles Darwin's grandfather.

   References

   Baillarger, J. (1846). Untitled document on hallucinations. In: Mémoires de l'Académie Royale de Médecine, XII, p. 469.