Source : FISH ’S Clinical psychopathology

Pain and deep sensation

These are termed visceral hallucinations by Sims (2003). Some patients with chronic schizophrenia may complain of twisting and tearing pains.

These may be very bizarre when the patient complains that his organs are being torn out or the flesh ripped away from his body. For example, a patient described sensations in his brain as layers of tissue were being peeled off so as to bring to completion the battle between good and evil.

An interesting and unusual variety of hallucinosis is delusional zoopathy. This may take the form of a delusional belief that there is an animal crawling about in the body.

 There is also a hallucinatory component since the patient

feels it (hallucination) and can describe it in detail. In some cases this is associated with an organic disorder, as in the patient who said he was infested with an animal several centimetres long that he could feel in his stomach. He eventually died and at post mortem was found to have a tumour invading the thalamus.