Pseudohallucination  

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A pseudohallucination is an involuntary sensory experience vivid enough to be regarded as a hallucination, but recognised by the patient not to be the result of external stimuli. In other words, it is a hallucination that is recognized as a hallucination, as opposed to a "normal" hallucination which would be perceived as real. An example used in psychiatry is the hearing of voices which are inside the head according to the patient; in contrast, a hallucination would be indistinguishable to the patient from a real external stimulus, e.g. people were talking about me.

The term is not widely used in the psychiatric and medical fields, as it is considered ambiguous. The term "nonpsychotic hallucination" is more preferred. Pseudohallucinations, then, are more likely to happen with a hallucinogenic drug. Thus, when one speaks of hallucinating when under the influence of such a drug (excluding deliriants), they are probably referring to pseudohallucinations.

They are considered a feature of conversion disorder, somatization disorder, and dissociative disorders.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Pseudohallucination" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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