Source : FISH ’S Clinical psychopathology

Autoscopy or phantom mirror-image

Autoscopy, also called phantom mirror-image, is the experience of seeing oneself and knowing that it is oneself. It is not just a visual hallucination because kinaestethic and somatic sensation must also be present to give the subject the impression that the hallucination is oneself. This symptom can occur in healthy subjects when they are emotionally upset or when exhausted. In these cases there is some change in the state of consciousness.

Occasionally autoscopy is a hysterical symptom. Occasionally patients with schizophrenia have autoscopic hallucinations but they are more common in acute and sub-acute delirious states. The organic states most associated

with autoscopy are epilepsy, focal lesions affecting the parieto−occipital region and toxic infective states whose effect is greatest in the basal regions of the brain. The fact that autoscopy is often associated with disorders of the parietal lobe due to cerebrovascular disorders or severe infectious diseases accounts for the German folklore belief that when someone sees their double or Doppelganger it indicates that they are about to die. Sometimes these may be pseudo-hallucinations occurring in internal space and described by the patient as being ‘in the mind’s eye’.

A few patients suffering from organic states look in the mirror and see no image, known as negative autoscopy. Some psychiatrists describe internal autoscopy in which the subject sees their own internal organs, although this is rare. The description of the internal organs is that which would be expected from a layperson, with a crude knowledge of anatomy.