algohallucinosis

   The term algohallucinosis may be indebted to the Latin noun algorismus (which is a Latiniza-tion of Al-Khwarizmi, the last name of an Arabic mathematician (±780—±850) who published on arithmetic and algebra). It appears to connote 'a state of calculated hallucinatory activity'. The term was introduced in or shortly before 1920 by the Russian neurologist Johann Susmann Galant (1893—1937?) to denote a concept that treats hallucinations, in psychoanalytic fashion, as subconsciously elaborated wish-fulfilments. As Galant wrote, "We regard the hallucination as a wish, or better, a wish-fulfilment, the strivings of which were so powerful that they breached all the soul's compartments that were installed there by the laws of nature, and to the individual the wish became an incontrovertible reality that fulfilled the wish, although there exists nothing in the outside world that would back up the contents of that fulfilled wish. So the wish has found its fulfilment in an unnatural manner, via the path of hallucination." According to Galant, percepts only qualify as hallucinations when they arise suddenly and involuntarily. With his algohallucinosis concept, Galant sought to tone down the terminological fuzziness that — in his opinion — surrounded the hallucinations concept in the early 20th century. A second meaning of the term algohallucinosis stems from the work of the Belgian neuropathologist Ludo van Bogaert (1897—1989). In 1934, van Bogaert proposed the French neologism algohallucinose (with the prefix algo- stemming from the Greek noun algesis, meaning pain) as a generic term for the notions of * phantom pain and * phantom limb. Van Bogaert motivated this proposal by asserting that "the patient, who does not have any doubt whatsoever concerning their reality, knows the illusory character of their localization, precisely in the way the individual suffering from hallucinosis sees images in an objective way without ever leaving any doubt about their lack of reality. It is for this reason that we propose to reintro-duce the painful illusions of amputees within the more general context of the 'algo-hallucinoses'. This name, criticizable from other points of view, adequately expresses the two essential qualities of these disorders." The notion of algohalluci-nosis should not be confused with *hallucinated pain.

   References

   Galant, S. (1920). Algohallucinosis. Berlin: Verlag von August Hirschwald.

   Galant, S. (1924). Das Halluzinationsproblem und die Algohallucinosis. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 70, 187—215.

   Van Bogaert, L. (1934). Sur la pathologie de l'image de soi (Études anatomo-cliniques). Annales Médico-psychologiques, 92, 519—555.