Psychopathology ABNORMALITIES OF PERCEPTION This page was last updated on October 8, 2012

Hyperaesthesia: Increased intensity of sensations, seen in intense emotions and hypochondriacal personalities Illusions: Misperceptions or misinterpretations of real external sensory stimuli: e.g. Shadows may be misperceived as frightening figures. Hallucinations: Perception in the absence of real external stimuli; experienced as true perception coming from the external word (not within the mind). e.g. hearing a voice of someone when actually nobody is speaking within the hearing distance. o Auditory hallucinations (voice, sound, noise). Second-person hallucinations: voice speaking to the person addressing him as you. Third-person hallucinations: voice talking about the person as he or she: Thought echo: hearing ones own thoughts spoken aloud. o Visual hallucinations (images/sights) o Olfactory hallucinations (smell/odour) o Gustatory hallucinations (taste) o Tactile hallucinations (touch/surface sensations) o Somatic hallucinations (visceral and other internal sensations). Imperative hallucination: voices giving instructions to patients, who may or may not feel obliged to carry them out. Thought echo (Gedankenlautwerden): hearing ones own thoughts being spoken aloud; the voice may come from inside or outside the head. Running commentary hallucinations: are usually abusive and often talk about sexual topics. Scenic hallucinations: hallucinations in which whole scenes are hallucinated like a cinema film; more common in psychiatric disorders associated with epilepsy. Lilliputian hallucinations: micropsia affects the visual hallucinations, so the pt. sees tiny people. Formication: a feeling that animals are crawling over the body; not uncommon in acute organic states. Cocaine bug: formication occurring with delusions of persecution; in cocaine psychosis. Functional hallucinations: a stimulus causes the hallucination, but it is experienced as well as the hallucination. Seen in chronic schizophrenia Reflex hallucinations: a stimulus in one sensory field produces a hallucination in another. Extracampine hallucinations: a hallucination which is outside the limits of the sensory field. Autoscopy (phantom mirror image): the pt. sees himself and knows that it is he. Seen in normal subjects when they are depressed or emotionally disturbed. Negative autoscopy: the pt. looks in the mirror and sees no image; in organic states. Internal autoscopy: the subject sees his own internal organs.

Pseudo-Hallucinations: Sensory deceptions perceived as emanating from within the mind. Hypnagogic hallucinations: hallucinations when falling asleep Hypnopompic hallucinations: hallucinations when waking from sleep

References 1. Psychiatry, Third Edition. Edited by Allan Tasman, Jerald Kay, Jeffrey A. Lieberman, Michael B. First and Mario Maj. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2008. 2. Sims, A. Symptoms in the Mind: An Introduction to Descriptive Psychopathology (3rd ed). Elsevier, 2002. 3. Fish, F. Clinical Psychopathology, Signs and Symptoms in Psychiatry. Bristol: J. Wright & Sons. 1967.