Hallucinations Quotes
"The mind would not be able to tell apart vision from reality."
"The brain needs not only perceptual input but perceptual change."
"This strong disposition to the exotic, for reasons we do not yet understand, is characteristic of CBS."
"The hallucinations of CBS are unthreatening and, once accommodated to, mildly diverting."
"The theater is in one's own mind, and yet the hallucinations seem to have little to do with one in any deeply personal sense."
"Most of us have difficulty summoning smells to mind, even with strong suggestion."
"The ability to imagine smells, in normal circumstances, is not that common."
"Hallucinations give one the impression that, at some lower level, in the early visual system, there is a categorical dictionary of images."
"Dreams are neurological as well as psychological phenomena, but very unlike CBS hallucinations."
"The ability to evaluate one's perceptions or hallucinations, however, may be compromised if there are other underlying problems in the brain."
"The images of CBS are more stereotyped than those of dreams and at the same time less intelligible, less meaningful."
"No one can have hallucinations of musical notation or numbers or letters, for example, if they have not actually seen these at some point in real life."
"No single individual has all of these perceptual and hallucinatory phenomena, though some people may have a great range."
"The voices not only speak to the patient, but they pass electricity through the body, beat him, paralyse him, take his thoughts away."
"He is going to be burned alive," while his mother's voice says, "He will not be burned."
"The lemonade speaks, the patient’s name is heard to be coming from a glass of milk."
"I hallucinate conversations on a regular basis, often as I am falling asleep at night."
"During the days when I was living alone in a foreign city—I was a young man at the time—I quite often heard my name suddenly called by an unmistakable and beloved voice."
"These voices weren’t elaborate, and they weren’t disturbing in content."
"Hearing voices occurs in every culture and has often been accorded great importance."
"To me thissensethis sensethissense only comes in the artificial mystic state of mind."
"I would feel that the surfaces of various objects were covered by a film of fuzz, like peach fuzz, or the down in a pillow."
"Panic seized me; I slammed a five-dollar note on the table and ran across the road."
"I realized that I was hallucinating or experiencing some bizarre perceptual disorder."
"I am never without pen and notebook, and now I wrote for dear life, as wave after wave of hallucination rolled over me."
"Writing had always been my best way of dealing with complex or frightening situations."
"I was taking a huge amount of chloral hydrate and ran out of it last night."
"Much better DT's than a schizophrenic psychosis."
"I would take the stuff on Friday evenings after getting back from work and would then spend the whole weekend so high."
"I felt myself in the Dickensian London of the 1860s and ’70s."
"I had had a sort of revelation about migraine."
"The joy I got from doing this was real—infinitely more substantial than the vapid mania of amphetamines."
"She knew that she had had a small stroke on one side in the visual part of her brain."
"She did not fear that she was losing her mind."
"She did not for a moment think that her hallucinations were 'real'."
"She made a careful note of the hallucinations as they occurred."
"She realized that the hallucinations were caused by this and were probably transient."
"She observed that, in two instances, she had hallucinated something she had seen shortly before."
"She wondered whether the fact that she was a deeply religious Catholic had played a part in her seeing a hallucination of praying hands."
"She thought the Olympic runner might have been provoked by the fact that the 2008 Olympic Games were coming up."
"She was struck by how things she had seen could change into similar forms."
"She was struck by the sequence of her hallucinations."
"This old lady, curious and intelligent, would observe her own hallucinations so calmly and thoughtfully."
"Monroe Cole, a neurologist, became aware of his own field loss only by doing a neurological exam on himself."
"Even intelligent patients often are surprised when a hemianopia is demonstrated."
"He has not recovered vision and retains a left hemianopia."
"He has, however, little awareness of his visual loss as his brain appears to fill in the missing parts."
"His visual hallucinations / filling in always seem to be context-sensitive or consistent."
"His hallucinations blend perfectly well with his environment and seem to 'complete' his missing perception."
"He has none of the outlandish, obviously out-of-context hallucinations commonly reported in hemianopia."
"No history of the physiology of stumps would be complete without some account of the sensorial delusions to which persons are subject in connection with their lost limbs."
"Nearly every man who loses a limb carries about with him a constant or inconstant phantom of the missing member, a sensory ghost of that much of himself."
"The certainty with which these patients describe their [phantom motions], and their confidence as to the place assumed by the parts moved, are truly remarkable."
"I saw six druids standing against the window, above the stirring London street below. I saw them, and they beckoned to me."
"I felt my uterus being squeezed and told myself not to move or cry out... Then, suddenly, I was floating with the back of my head against the ceiling."
"For me, the cause for wonder are those in which the lost feet are not felt."
"The very essence of divinity, of God, is immaterial. God cannot be seen, felt, or heard in the ordinary way."
"The emphasis in evangelical Christianity, Luhrmann writes, is on prayer and other spiritual exercises as skills that must be learned and practiced."
"Mental images become as clear and as real as the external world."
"Look, put thy live leg here in place where mine once was; so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, yet two to the soul."
"A single patient with the right sort of lesion and a scientific mind, carefully cross-examined, is more likely to deepen our knowledge than a thousand circulars."
"Those who do have phantoms seem to have cerebral 'action observation systems' similar to those of normally limbed people."
"Philosophers like to speak of 'embodiment' and 'embodied agency,' and there is no simpler place to study this than in the nature of phantoms."
"For Captain Ahab, however, this was a matter for horror as much as wonder."
"Once, as she was drifting off to sleep, she felt 'as if I was being held on my right side, as if someone had put their arms around me and was stroking my hair.'"
"Nelson regarded his phantom as 'a direct proof for the existence of the soul.'"