Sociocultural factors in hallucinations

Sociocultural factors affect both the definition and the sense organs involved in hallucinations. It is suggested that, in addition to the importance of audition in communication on the human level, other sociocultural factors may affect the choice of sense organs in the expression of hallucinatory experience. As compared with non-Western societies, Western attitudes consider hallucinations more shameful and frightening (symptoms of mental illness) and this tend to be more liable to concealment and chronicity. It is proposed that the psychoanalytical approached to the interpretation of dreams or behavioural techniques could be used to overcome the concomitants of Western attitudes toward hallucinations.