ONEIROID HALLUCINATION

oneiroid hallucination: translation

The term oneiroid hallucination is indebted to the Greek nounoneiros, which means dream. It also refers to the * Oneiroi, the gods of dreams featuring in Greek mythology. The term oneiroid hallucination translates loosely as 'dream-like hallucination'. It was introduced by the French classical scholar and dream researcher Louis-FerdinandAlfred Maury (1817-1892), who suggested that the false perceptions of * dreams, * delirium, and *hallucinations proper have a common origin. Due to a nervous breakdown, Maury had firsthand experience of hallucinations. He postulated a mechanism called * oneirism to denote an uninterrupted process of * dream activity which may be drowned out by * sensory perceptions, but which under certain peculiar circumstances may gain the upper hand during one's waking hours. It was also Maury who in 1848 introduced the term *hypnagogic hallucination to denote the introductory nature of these phenomena as they lead the individual into sleep.

Dowbiggin, I. (1990). Alfred Maury and the politics of the unconscious in nineteenth-century France.History of Psychiatry, 1, 255-287.

Maury, L.F.A. (1848). Des hallucinations hypn-agogiques.Annales Médico-psychologiques, 11, 26-40.

Maury, L.F.A. (1865).Le sommeil et les rêves. Études psychologiques sur ces phénomènes et les divers états qui s'y rattachent. Troisième édition. Paris: Librairie Académique Didier et Cie., Libraires-Éditeurs.