A Dictionary of Hallucinations

Clinical psychiatrist Blom (psychiatry, U. of Groningen, the Netherlands) presents articles on five categories of the phenomenon: specific symptoms, medical conditions and substances associated with the mediation of hallucinations, definitions of the terms hallucination and illusion by some important historical authors, historical figures who are known to have experienced hallucinations, and miscellaneous issues. One small sampling of his topics turns up borderline personality disorders and hallucinations, dimensions of visual imagery, hallucination in braille, inattentional deafness, obscuration, German judge Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911), and teleological hallucination. There is no index, but the cross-referencing is extensive. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Jan Dirk Blom, M.D., Ph.D., is a clinical psychiatrist, specialized in the field of psychotic disorders. He holds a Ph.D. from the Philosophy Department of the University of Leiden, on the deconstruction of the biomedical schizophrenia concept. He is currently involved in a collaborative project with the University of Utrecht, on model based and model free analyses of fMRI activation patterns obtained from individuals with verbal auditory hallucinations, and an experimental treatment method with fMRI-guided repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation.