Visual auras in three patients with brain damage and seizures were studied by psychological testing, hypnosis, psychiatric interviews, and free associations. In two cases, the aura could be reproduced under hypnosis and underlying fantasies could be obtained. From these studies it is concluded that the visual aura is like the manifest content of a dream, and that visual aura is derived from underlying latent content by the mechanisms of plastic representation, condensation, symbolization, and distortion, just as occurs in the dream. 'The aura can no longer be considered as formed exclusively by a disturbance in a discrete portion of the cortex, but is to be regarded as a complex phenomenon resulting from the total integrative activity of the brain.'