Also known as multimodal hallucination, polymodal hallucination, polysensual hallucination, polysensory hallucination, polysensorial hallucination, intersensorial hallucination, and fantastic hallucination. All these terms are used to denote a hallucination experienced in more than one sensory modality at a time. Some examples of compound hallucinations are the audiovisual hallucination, the * audioalgesic hallucination, and the * audiovisuoalgesic hallucination. When a compound hallucination replaces the total * sensory input, it is referred to as a *scenic or *panoramic hallucination. When it depicts one or more human beings, it is referred to as a *personification. In a study by the American psychiatrists Donald W. Goodwin (1932c-1999) et al. among 117 individuals with varying clinical diagnoses (i.e. affective disorder, acute and chronic *schizophrenia, alcoholism, organic brain syndrome or hysteria) compound hallucinations were found to be relatively rare, whereas the subsequent occurrence of hallucinations in two or more different sensory modalities was reported by three-quarters of the population under study. The simultaneous occurrence of these hallucinations was reported by 50% of the individuals with a clinical diagnosis of affective disorder or schizophrenia, but only as an infrequent experience. The term compound hallucination derives from a classification of hallucinations governed by the number of sensory modalities involved. It is used in opposition to the term * unimodal hallucination.
References
Critchley, M. (1939). Visual and auditory hallucinations. British Medical Journal, 2, 634-639.
Goodwin, D.W., Alderson, P., Rosenthal, R. (1971). Clinical significance of hallucinations in psychiatric disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry, 24, 76-80.
Dictionary of Hallucinations. J.D. Blom. 2010.