AUDITORY VERBAL HALLUCINATION

auditory verbal hallucination: translation

   Also known as verbal auditory hallucination, voice hallucination, *phoneme, hallucinated speech, and 'voices'. The term auditory verbal hallucination (AVH) is often used as a synonym for verbal auditory hallucination (VAH), both terms referring to what are commonly known as 'voices'. Thus the expressions AVH and VAH refer to the same phenomenon and tend to be used interchangeably.And yet they have a slightly different connotation, due to the conceptual backgrounds from which they stem. By definition, VAHs are primarily auditory in nature and are distinguished from other auditory hallucinations (of a musical or otherwise nonverbal nature) by the specifier verbal. The notion of the AVH, on the other hand, refers to a type of hallucination which is primarily verbal in nature and which is distinguished from other verbal hallucinations (such as * psychomotor verbal hallucinations, which are regarded as inaudible in nature) by means of the adjective auditory. This latter distinction, i.e. between auditory verbal hallucinations and psychomotor verbal hallucinations, is based on the work of the French psychiatrist Louis Jules Ernest Séglas (1856-1939). After Séglas's death in 1939 the notion of the psychomotor hallucination receded into the background of psychiatric conceptual thinking. However, its conceptual opposite, the notion of the auditory verbal hallucination, somehow retained its popularity.

   References

   Séglas, J. (1888). L'hallucination dans ses rapports avec la fonction du langage; - les hallucinations psycho-motrices. Progrès Médical, 33/34, 124-126.

   Blom, J.D., Sommer, I.E.C. (2009). Auditory hallucinations. Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology (in press).