Auditory hallucination
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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An auditory hallucination, or paracusia, is a form of hallucination that involves perceiving sounds without auditory stimulus. A common form involves hearing one or more talking voices. This may be associated with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia or mania, and holds special significance in diagnosing these conditions. The main types of auditory hallucination can be broken down in to three sub category's a person hearing a voice speak one thoughts, a person hearing one or two more voices arguing, and a person hearing a voice narrating there own actions. However, individuals may hear voices without suffering from diagnosable mental illness. The Hearing Voices Movement is a support and advocacy group for people who hallucinate voices, but do not otherwise show signs of mental illness or impairment.
Other types of auditory hallucination include exploding head syndrome and musical ear syndrome. In the latter, people will hear music playing in their mind, usually songs they are familiar with. Recent reports have also mentioned that it is also possible to get musical hallucinations from listening to music for long periods of time. This can be caused by: lesions on the brain stem (often resulting from a stroke); also, tumors, encephalitis, or abscesses. Other reasons include hearing loss and epileptic activity.
Famous examples
Robert Schumann, a famous music composer, spent the end of his life experiencing auditory hallucinations. Schumann’s diaries state that he suffered perpetually from imagining that he had the note A5 sounding in his ears. The musical hallucinations became increasingly complex. One night he claimed to have been visited by the ghost of Schubert and wrote down the music that he was hearing. Thereafter, he began making claims that he could hear an angelic choir singing to him. As his condition worsened, the angelic voices transmogrified into demonic voices.
Joan of Arc claimed to hear the voices of Saints who were the force that guided her and was resolved to obey these messages as she believed they were sent directly from God. She first began hearing voices when she was thirteen and soon after had visions of St. Francis, St. Catherine and St. Margaret.
See also
- Auditory imagery
- Earworm
- Electronic voice phenomenon
- hypnagogic hallucinations
- Microwave auditory effect
- Speech synthesis
