Massimiliano Aragona

 

This is a preliminary philosophical audit exploring the limits of previous scales and settling the desiderata, i.e., the main general features that a Phenomenological Auditory Hallucination Scale should have to be useful in this field.

Common general limits are the surreptitious idea that mental phenomena are measurable objects in a real sense, the superficiality of many features that are rated (hampering qualitative distinctions), the rigidity of the validity procedures and of the correlated scoring methods, leading to possible Procrustean effects and petrification of the phenomena.

As an alternative, the Phenomenological Auditory Hallucination Scale is proposed as an open instrument subject to subsequent collective revision. It has to be focused not only on intrinsic features of the hallucinations, but also on the context in which they are situated (figure-ground organization). It has to make possible the detection of qualitative differences between apparently similar phenomena. It must be flexible in the description of the features that can be rated, as well as in the scoring procedure itself.

Conceived in this way, the Phenomenological Auditory Hallucination Scale could be very useful for both clinical exploration of the phenomena (the phenomenological ‘unfolding’ of experiences) and prototypical research comparing similar phenomena in different conditions.

 

Philosophy of psychiatry, rating scales, psychodiagnostics, psychopathology, phenomenology, hallucinations