Translated from: Baillarger JGF (1846) Extrait d’un mémoire intitulé: des hallucinations, des causes qui les produisent, et des maladies qu’elles caractérisent. Baillière, Paris (pp.383-400)

Baillarger is credited to be the first alienist who distinguished two kinds of hallucinations: psycho-sensorial and psychic. The first part presented his views on psycho-sensorial hallucinations (Baillarger, 1846/2022). In this second paper we present the English translation of part on psychic hallucinations (the second and last part will follow in a next issue of Dialogues).

Regarding psychic hallucinations, Baillarger notes that they had been already described by mystical authors, only they were not considered by clinicians. Then he starts describing clinical cases in which the hallucinatory experience is not sensorial but purely psychic. Firstly, he shows that a similar experience occurs normally in dreams, where we converse with someone without really hearing her voice. This experience of purely mental hearing is then illustrated in typical patients, some experiencing both psycho-sensory and psychic hallucinations, some only purely psychic ones.

Among the latter, Baillarger presents cases in which some hear thoughts through a sixth sense, others converse with a real person but mentally, still others communicate with an invisible interlocutor within themselves or see external spirits and converse with them exclusively through thoughts.