[Negative hallucination, denial of reality and scotomization]

In this paper, the authors intended to outline the history of three psychiatric and psycho-analytical concepts (negative hallucination, disavowal and scotomisation) and to analyse the psychic processes that they stand for. Historical study: Bernheim coined the expression negative hallucination in 1884. Freud used it from 1895 until 1917 when he discarded it. Freud put forward the concept of disavowal in 1914. In its wider meaning it is equivalent to negative hallucination. In its more specific meaning it designates the simultaneous acknowledgement and non-acknowledgement of a traumatic perception. Scotomisation, introduced by Pichon and Laforgue, is identical to negative hallucination. Freud and Laforgue had a long and polemical discussion about it. Psychological, metapsychological and psychopathological study: Only the concepts of negative hallucination and disavowal, in their more specific meaning, ought to be considered here. In their first phases, both processes are identical. The first phase is a "preliminary position", a conception of things, related to wishes and the pleasure principle. The second phase is marked by a stimulus which is unconsciously perceived as "unbearable". During the third phase, perception is suspended by various processes. It is with the fourth phase that the mechanisms differ. In the negative hallucination, the ego keeps the perception unconscious whereas in disavowal (in its specific meaning) it is split, one part acknowledges the perception, the other disavows it. The authors stress the importance of the negative hallucination and disavowal for psychopathology and psychoanalysis.