ABSTRACT
The ability to produce and to be gripped by hallucinations is one of the most spectacular of human capacities. Sigmund Freud began by arguing that the overall and most basic function of hallucination is to reduce psychic disturbance and, in effect, to achieve a painless state. The goal of Freudian dream interpretation is to fathom the latent thought and the repressed wishes it supports that appear in the dream in a hallucinatory way. Freud called attention to the germ of historical truth hallucinations express in distorted form, so that hallucination itself may also be implicated in the ego's tie to reality. Reality also may fall victim to negative hallucination, as in "disavowal," wherein a significant portion of or even the whole of reality is experienced as not there. Freud's work is part of a wider cultural movement in which human beings imagine themselves on the verge of coming out of an age-old hallucinatory state.
