I'm not sure if this is the right forum for my question, so if it is not please move it (and my apologies).
In some of the early literature on psychoanalysis, there are reports of patients having hallucinations of one kind or another (vidual, auditory, etc.), and the analysis is that these hallucination symbolically represent repressed content in the unconscious.
A lot of psychoanalysis has been discredited today, but I'm wondering if there's still anything to this. Can hallucinations carry any symbolic significance, or are they more or less random?
I believe that images we see in our mind, whether hallucinary or otherwise, are somehow linked to our memories and associated memories, with one thing leading to another. Such memories come into our consciousness through some sort of trigger, whether that is something we see, hear, smell, taste, touch or any combination of those and then one memory will bring up other memories due to us 'sensing' that first memory and hence the continuous loop that leads to ongoing thoughts.
Whether that has any meaning or not I guess would depend on the context of the initial trigger and the associations of a person's individual memories.
Love and Reiki Hugs
Random visions
Can hallucinations carry any symbolic significance, or are they more or less random?
Hi Gib, Giles
What do we mean when we say random! Are some things uncertain? Are others certain? Why do some things have causes? Why do others not?
I believe that the notion that we live in a universe that is made of randomness and order is just a great big hallucination based on the way we try to understand how things happen.
We don't like unexplained things. We look for causes for things. If we can explain why things happen then we feel we can have some measure of control over them. But are we just creating a more elaborate trap for ourselves?
And what do we mean by a hallucination?
I think it is safer to say that perceptions commonly shared are less likely to have arisen through mass hysteria but even this is uncertain. Are we all here because our karma has given us birth in this form and isn't it likely that this birth is given to us in the same world that others with similar imaginations would create?
So is a hallucination then just a perception that is not corroborated by concensus? Does this make it unreal? Can something unreal have a cause? Is it possible for something that is unreal to have no cause?
Norbu
Hi Norbu,
So is a hallucination then just a perception that is not corroborated by concensus? Does this make it unreal? Can something unreal have a cause? Is it possible for something that is unreal to have no cause?
By that token, every thought we have in our own mind, that only we perceive, is a hallucination and, as our senses are perceived as thoughts that are individual to ourselves, everything we perceive is 'unreal' or a hallucination.
😉
Love and Reiki Hugs
I think that hallucinations do have a link to our memory...albeit it could be a very small one. So small that we couldn't make a connection. This is kind of like a dream, where you have a dream in which a person you passed at the train station is in it