There is very little doubt that as medical knowledge progresses we
shall know more about the cause of such hallucinations. To call
them unreal is mere stupidity. Sensible people who suffer from them
are often perfectly well aware of their unreality, and are
profoundly humiliated by them. They are some disease or weakness of
the imaginative faculty; and a friend of mine who suffered from
such things told me that it was extraordinary to him to perceive
the incredible ingenuity with which his brain under such
circumstances used to find confirmation for his fears from all
sorts of trivial incidents which at other times passed quite
unnoticed. It is generally quite useless to think of removing the
fear by combating the particular fancy; the affected centre,
whatever it is, only turns feverishly to some other similar
anxiety. Occupation of a quiet kind, exercise, rest, are the best
medicine.
Sometimes these anxieties take a different form, and betray
themselves by suspicion of other people's conduct and motives. That
is of course allied to insanity.
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