Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

March 9, 1965. UNCONSCIOUS HALLUCINATIONS IN NORMAL THINKING. Engene V. Nininger, M.D.

According to the author, all thought, even the most abstract, is unconsciously experienced as occurring in a space outside the brain case. This sphere is frequently

occupied by real objects, which may be refashioned from moment to moment into illusions that fit thinking requirements, ad may also contain hallucinations without link to surrounding reality. The hallucinations differ from those of psychosis in that they may be controlled or dismissed from awareness. The consciously accepted conviction that thinking takes place within the head is a form of denial initiated by the infant because an unpleasant prototype of thought must be denied. This is the hallucinated image of the absent mother, called into existence by hunger, but ultimately rejected when memory proves it to be associated with a continuation of hunger pain.

Nininger observed this mechanism in an adult patient who believed she was experiencing compulsive thoughts inside her head relating to her mother's death. She did not close her eyes, however, lest the 'thoughts' become images of 'movie-like' intensity, i.e., hallucinations. Instances of a similar denial mechanism may be observed in normal individuals when their gestures and eye movements betray that they are experiencing thoughts not inside their heads as they believe, but as if outside themselves. The author himself was able to catch a phase between sleeping and waking when his dream images intermingled with those of real objects for several moments. In another instance he observed himself remembering eidetic, auditory, and tactile experiences that did not seem to have occurred within his head as he recalled them, so, by inference, must have occurred as events in space.

Turning from concrete memory to abstract thought, Nininger considers the experience involved in his comprehension of the equation, A plus B equals C, and its relation to various tactile a