BUILDING A FORTEAN LIBRARY
There’s a standard, somewhat dismissive, sceptical explanation of anomalous phenomena that characterises them all as the product of misperceptions, hoaxes or hallucinations. Certainly there are plenty of reports of strange phenomena that can be accounted for under one of these three labels (although something as outlandish as spontaneous human combustion might struggle to fit). Our chosen volume for this entry is Hallucinations by the late neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose survey of the subject, its circumstances, types and causes, makes one wonder just how plausible an explanation “hallucination” is for many fortean events.
Throughout, Sacks makes the important point – which can bear endless repetition – that hallucinations are emphatically not a sign of madness (see FT408:57 for more on ‘everyday’ hallucinations). Indeed, he proves it – partly by noting the various diseases and afflictions that render people susceptible to hallucinations, which may differ according to the ailment, and by pointing out which area of the brain is involved, whether it’s simply activated, or is generating an illusion because of an injury. Even so, it’s clear that there’s still a widespread, semi-automatic association of insanity and “seeing things”. Hence the umbrage and affront that people display when it’s suggested that the ghost, or flying saucer, or winged humanoid that they saw was an hallucination. That’s not to say that some forms of mental breakdown don’t involve hallucinations – schizophrenia and dementia spring to mind – but that generally these phantasmagorical visions, or sounds, or smells, are not unfailing indications or symptoms of mental disarray. As Sacks put it: “Hallucinations don’t belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness or injury.”
One characteristic of an hallucination is that it’s indistinguishable from reality. What’s seen seems irrefragably there, solid and three-dimensional. Modern neuroimaging techniques show that when this occurs, visual centres in the brain light up in exactly the way they do when one looks at something that is indisputably there – a cat, a parrot, an apple tree. This does not happen when one imagines something: and after all, when you imagine a tiger, say, one doesn’t suddenly acquire a large stripey felid bouncing round the drawing room. The brain, in other words, treats the hallucination as objectively ‘out there’. Sacks has a fine example. He reports that poet Richard Howard, in a post-operative delirium, saw around his room a frieze of small creatures with the body of a mouse and the head of a deer. That he was hallucinating didn’t cross his mind, and he became a bit shirty when his partner insisted they weren’t there. None of which explains the source of any such images. Sacks’s patients constantly say they do not recognise the people they see, and it’s rare but by no means unknown for hallucinatory figures to speak to or otherwise interact with the percipient. Exceptions to this general rule are “visits” from dear but deceased relatives or pets (see FT398:40-45).
Sacks approaches his subject from various angles, devoting a chapter to each. Some deal with the by-products of various afflictions, such as Charles Bonnet syndrome (see FT125:14, 184:46-49, 321:54-55), Parkinson’s disease, narcolepsy and epilepsy, as well as the aftermaths of brain surgeries. Others deal with the effects of circumstances, such as sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, and indulgences in various drugs. Sacks indulges himself with a long chapter on his own drug-taking days, which mostly serves to illustrate his own recklessness – piling on with the amphetamines, for example, at the weekend, and then having to down 15 times the recommended dose of chloral hydrate to get any sleep. He seems (from our limited experience) to have been unusually sensitive to cannabis – two tokes and he was seeing his own hand “stretched across the Universe, light years or parsecs in length”, which “somehow also seemed like the hand of God.” This is considerably more extravagant than the state of fatuous giggling euphoria that was the most our youthful friends and ourselves achieved, and then only after rather more than a couple of drags on the joint. Either way, the distinction between imagination and hallucination could not be more stark – as is yet more evident in what followed: for Sacks suffered from aphantasia, the inability to create mental imagery.
Sacks next tried 20 tabs of Artane (used in treating parkinsonism). Soon after taking them, a couple of friends turned up, and they went into his living room while he made them all ham and eggs. That done, he went to fetch them and found the living room empty. They had never been there. Sacks consumed three times his expected breakfast. Then he heard a helicopter approaching his house. He knew (just as one ‘knows’ such things in dreams) that on board were his parents: they had flown from London to LAX and chartered a chopper from there to his house – which had a handy landing spot close by. He had a lightning-quick shower and change of clothes, by which time the throb of the helicopter was deafening. He legged it outside to find no helicopter – its noise had ceased abruptly – and no parents. One more hallucination. Sacks burst into tears. Then, while making a restorative cup of tea, he noticed a spider on the wall. When he stepped closer to it, it said “Hello”, to which
he replied “Hello yourself”
(as one does). The spider then launched a long discussion about analytical philosophy by asking if Sacks thought that “Bertrand Russell had exploded Frege’s paradox?”
The punchline to this came many years later when Sacks recounted the experience to a neurologist friend. “Ah yes,” said he, “I know the species well.”
From his account, it seems Sacks realised he was hallucinating only once the episode was over. One of the revelations of his book is how often people realise that what’s happening to them is an hallucination, while it happens, whereas the general (lay) assumption would appear to be that the experience is so real that only much later does this recognition occur, if at all – and so when that recognition doesn’t present itself, we have tales of ghosts, headless coachmen, alien visitations, timeslips, and the like.
Hallucinations aren’t limited to the visual field (as is apparent from Sacks’s experience with the throbbing helicopter). Phantasmagorical smells as well as sounds may plague or entertain percipients. Illusory smells bear a certain parallel with the visions related to Charles Bonnet syndrome, which occurs to people with partial or complete blindness. Objects, animals and people appear smaller than in real life, but blind people see them nonetheless. Olfactory hallucinations likewise occur to people who, for one reason or another, have lost their sense of smell. And they seem rarely to be pleasant. Sacks quotes one correspondent for whom lettuce smelt of turpentine, meat and other vegetables seemed to be rotten, and bread “tasted rancid; chocolate like machine oil”. Another was haunted one day by a grim reek combining those of “shit, puke, burning flesh and rotten eggs. Not to mention smoke, chemicals, urine and mould.” She added wryly: “My brain had truly outdone itself.” (Apart from sensors in the mouth for salt, bitter, sweet, savoury and sour flavours, the full range of tastes is detected in the sinuses: hence, a compromised sense of smell will affect what things taste like.) Others were more fortunate: one man described how if he called to mind a specific instance of a rose, or a lilac, or any other scented flower, he would find himself sniffing the appropriate fragrance.
Hallucinatory sounds are suprisingly common. We’ve probably all heard a disembodied voice call our name (usually when we’re on the verge of sleep), for instance. Other phantom voices may be more persistent: schizophrenics, notoriously, are chattered at constantly with usually accusatory utterances (although not everyone who hears voices is crazy, by any means). An example: “When the patient is eating, he hears a voice saying, ‘Each mouthful is stolen.’ If he drops something, he hears, ‘If only your foot had been chopped off.’” The voices heard by the schizoid may be localised, coming from anywhere – the walls, the ceiling, the cellar, the nose, the abdomen. Sometimes they are visualised: one man’s voices “perched above each of his ears. One voice is a little larger than the other, but both are about the size of a walnut, and they consist of nothing but a large ugly mouth.”
Many (sane) ‘hearers’ report having to listen to conversations between people that have nothing to do with them – compare the complete strangers who appear in visual hallucinations. One woman said she “felt like I’m a radio, tuned in to someone else’s world.” Reactions to hearing voices can differ vastly. Grandfather Smith found his hugely entertaining, and tried unsuccessfully to get them to give him hot tips for the races. He had better luck when he conscripted their help in card games. His son too heard voices, which pestered him with simple commands, and was tormented by them. Torture of another kind comes to some who, rather than voices, hear music, which you might think altogether more bearable. But not for those who are treated to only a few bars of “Come All Ye Faithful” before the tune begins again (and again and again). Another woman was afflicted by endless repetitions of “White Christmas”, although with practice she could alter the tempo, harmonies and even the lyrics, which must have been a relief. Sacks says that musical hallucinations tend to “spread” – that is, the number of tunes that are heard tends gradually to increase over time. One man found he could make selections from his “intracranial jukebox”, but not turn the “machine” off. Clearly, this can be disruptive, and sometimes the music is so loud it makes ordinary conversation hard to hear. That may not be as distracting as violinist Gordon B’s experience: he “sometimes hallucinated a piece of music while he was actually performing an entirely different piece at a concert.” Wouldn’t that make your eyes cross?
In some circumstances auditory hallucinations may be positively beneficial. Sacks recounts how, struggling down a mountain with a “buckling and dislocating knee”, he was tempted to stop for a nap. A “strong, clear, commanding voice” put paid to that bright idea: “You can’t rest here – you can’t rest anywhere. You’ve got to go on. Find a pace you can keep up and go on steadily.” Sacks did as he was told. Freud, intriguingly, had a couple of similar experiences.
Sacks’s book isn’t just a collection of strange-but-true tales. He gives us relevant autobiographical, medical and neurological backgrounds, and certainly demonstrates the extraordinary variety of both hallucinations and their causes. And given his own experiences, as well as his habitual vast range of references, he knows whereof he speaks. If one has a grump about the book, it’s that it lacks a map or three of the brain: it would help to know where are such esoteric areas (or clumps) as the basal ganglia, inferotemporal cortex, amygdala, uncinate gyrus, to name but a few. But this is still one for your library – and you get a provocative insight into Alice in Wonderland as well! ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oliver Sacks, Hallucinations, Picador, 2012.
“LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO WASTE TIME ON BOOKS THAT END BADLY” Jane Ann Krentz