7.4. Perception of reality In order not to tire the reader, we will explain the concepts of "good" and "evil" in general senseas they are described in the article "The Giving of the Torah". Distinctive feature of all evil is nothing but selfishness, called selfishness. It is opposite in

Distorted perception of reality

Distorted perception of reality When you are attached to someone, you think that this person is absolutely positive. This is inconsistent with reality. If your friend you thought wonderful person, deliberately hurts you, you suddenly

The human body is an amazing combination of many organs, tissues, functions, chemical reactions, electrical impulsesallowing a person to live, recognize and cognize the world around him. Cognition occurs with the help of influences on the human senses - light, sound, taste, smell, tactile and spatial perception. All this is the basis of human cognition and existence in the world around him. And perceptual disorders, whatever they may be and for whatever reasons they occur, are a serious problem.

Perception: reality plus imagination

The sense organs and imagination are involved in the fact that a person can perceive the world around him. The knowledge that is obtained with the help of sight, hearing, taste, tactile influence, smell and determination of the position of the body in space, are processed by special parts of the brain and, with the help of imagination and previous experience, become representations of the world around us. Perceptual disorders in any area do not allow a person to get a complete picture.

Far and near

And the perceptions of the received data are closely interrelated. Receptors that receive information about surrounding reality, transmit nerve impulses to the brain, where analysis, processing of the information received takes place and a response occurs in the form of an idea of \u200b\u200ban object or phenomenon that affects the receptors. Moreover, some of the receptors should receive such an effect through direct contact with the object, and some through space. So, for example, taste sensations occur when food enters the mouth and tongue. But vision allows you to see objects at a distance. Perception of the received information through various bodies senses and receptors - the main mechanism of human cognition of the world. Perceptual disorders are a complex physiological and psychological problem.

Senses and receptors

In addition to the six sensory organs known from school, the human body perceives much more stimuli. So, there are receptors responsible for the perception of heat - cold, pain, as well as the sensation of your body. So science distinguishes not six, but 9 types of sensations:

• vision;
• hearing;
• sense of smell;
• touch;
• equibrioception - a sense of balance;
• taste;
• nociception - perception of pain;
• thermoception - a feeling of warmth;
• proprioception - the spatial sensation of one's body.

Receiving information about the world around us with the help of various receptors, the brain processes them into the perception of the surrounding reality.

Perceptions and medical practice

If any abnormalities occur in the human body, a big problem - Perceptual disorders. Psychiatry as a scientific and practical area medicine studies these disorders and, as far as possible, helps to correct them. For centuries, psychiatrists have been studying perceptual disorders, helping not only the patients themselves, but also the people around them, to live with such problems. Disorders of one or more sense organs are not always disorders of a comprehensive analysis of the surrounding world. A person who has lost his sight knows how objects and colors look in reality and with the help of the work of the other senses can present a real picture of the world around him. In psychiatry, disorders of the perception process are a whole complex of disorders caused not so much by problems in the functioning of receptors, but by changes in the processes of processing the information received and obtaining the final result.

How do perception disorders manifest?

The field of psychiatry is a special field of medicine that studies various mental disorders and their manifestations. This is a very specific area of \u200b\u200bhuman knowledge, which operates with the concepts of "disease", "health", "norm" and "pathology" in relation to mental state... One of the areas of work of a psychiatrist is perception disorders. Psychiatry considers similar problems mental pathologies... Disorders of sensation and perception are manifested in several conditions:

• Anesthesia is manifested by an inability to perceive tactile sensations, taste and smell. In its manifestations, it is similar to medical anesthesia, caused to turn off the sensitivity of pain receptors in patients during medical interventions.
• Hyperesthesia is a sensitivity disorder caused by an apparent increase in smell, light, sound. Very often, hyperesthesia manifests itself in patients who have suffered a traumatic brain injury.
• Hyposthesia is a change in sensitivity inverse to hyperesthesia. Sensory perception reduces natural stimuli. Patients with depressive disorders suffer from hyposthesia, for whom the world seems dull and boring.
• Paresthesias are expressed in sensations of itching, burning, tingling, "goose bumps" caused by impaired blood supply and innervation. Often paresthesias occur in the Zakharyin-Ged zones: problems internal organs appear in the form of unpleasant, painful sensations on certain areas of the human body surface.
• Senestopathies - discomfortarising inside the human body, they are difficult to describe in words, most often the patient uses vivid comparative images to tell about these sensations.

"Wrong" feelings sometimes coincide with clinical manifestations any disease, and not only from psychiatric practice. Literate or condition - this is the basis of quality treatment.

Major Perceptual Disorders

Psychiatry as a field of clinical medicine operates with the concepts of methodology, diagnosis, treatment and prevention. To make a diagnosis, it is necessary to clearly know the manifestations of the disease, this helps clinical analyzes, collection of anamnesis, laboratory and instrumental research... The categorization of judgments allows you to correctly interpret the data obtained in order to make an adequate diagnosis. To denote specific mental health problems in psychiatry, there are two main categories of perceptual disorder:

• illusions;
• hallucinations.

Both concepts cause enough for most people negative feelings, but the patient himself has no power over them, although in many cases such disorders occur due to conditions into which a person will drive himself, for example, drug or alcohol poisoning. Some types of perception disorders can occur in perfectly healthy people in terms of psychiatry.

Blue caterpillar from Wonderland

"What you see, but which is not really" - here it is, a hallucination. Problems in the perception of reality as it really is, are manifested by the emergence of pseudo-real images. Psychiatry, studying perception disorders, defines hallucinations as an image that has appeared in consciousness and is defined as really existing, but without an external stimulus acting on a person's receptors. These images appear from scratch, so to speak, due to a perceptual disorder. Hallucinations by psychiatrists are divided into several types:

• - represent bright images, for the patient having certain forms, color, smell, emitting specific sounds. True hallucinations are perceived by the patient as a manifestation of reality through his senses, he tries to manipulate them, as if the phenomena or objects visible to him exist in reality. In addition, according to the patient experiencing true hallucinations, all people around him should perceive them in the same way as he does.
• Pseudohallucinations are perceived by the patient as something unnatural, but really existing, it is devoid of brightness, often incorporeal, it can occur either from the patient's body, or from areas that are not subject to his receptors. Often, false hallucinations are considered by the patient to be forcibly inserted into his body with the help of special devices, apparatus, machines, or because of the mental influence exerted on him.

In addition to these two types of hallucinations, they are also subdivided according to the senses with which they can be caused:

• visceral;
• flavoring;
• visual;
• olfactory;
• auditory;
• tactile.

Each such type of hallucination has its own scientific definition and can be decomposed into several subspecies, which is important for clinical psychiatry.

By the way, hallucinations can be suggested and caused. One of the methods of psychiatry uses the Aschaffenburg symptom, when the patient is given to listen to a previously disconnected telephone, thus checking his readiness for auditory hallucinations. Or is Reichardt's symptom a symptom blank slate: the patient is given absolutely white list paper and is invited to tell about what is depicted on it. Hallucinations can also be functional, arising against the background of irritation of certain receptors and disappearing after removal of the stimulus. By the way, the image of the Blue Caterpillar smoking a hookah on a mushroom head from Lews Carroll's fairy tale "Alice in Wonderland" is regarded by many as a classic hallucination.

Such a beautiful illusion

In psychiatry, another type of perception disorder is distinguished - illusion. Everyone is familiar with this concept, even those who do not suffer from mental disorders of perception. People often use the expression "beautiful illusion, terrible illusion." So what is it? Scientific definition one of the types of perception disorders sounds like a wrong, erroneous perception of objects that exist in reality. Deception of the senses is what an illusion is. For example, an illusion can arise with an insufficient level of stimulus - in the dark it is very easy to mistake the outline of a bush for a human figure. So the emergence of illusions is not always the field of psychiatry. The characteristic features illusions are:

• an object or phenomenon undergoing sensory distortion: a figure, voice, tactile or spatial sensation;
• distortion, misperception and assessment of a real object;
• the illusion is based on sensory perception, that is, the person's receptors are actually affected, but it is perceived somewhat differently than it really is;
• a sense of the false as real.

Disorder visual perception - one of the common illusions healthy people... Moreover, such an error can be of a physical or physiological nature. Physical nature illusions have nothing to do with psychiatry, the same mirage in the desert has a logical rationale, albeit not too simple, but proven by the exact science of physics. Clinical psychiatry deals with psychopathological illusions:

• affective, arising against the background of fear or nervous excitability about the impending danger;
• verbal, i.e. verbal, illusions - single words or phrases that are heard by a person;
• pareidolic illusions - visual illusions that arise against the background of a real image by conjecturing images, for example, a drawing on a wallpaper can become an illusion of the frightening content of a picture; most often such illusions are observed in creative personalities, for example, scientists have established that Leonardo da Vinci suffered from pareidolia.

The basis of illusions is disorders of perception and ideas about the surrounding world. They are not always pathological. They are often caused by a distortion of perception against the background of an incorrect assessment of the functioning of receptors.

Thinking and memory for perception disorders

What distinguishes Homo sapiens from all other living beings? The ability to think. Thinking is basic cognitive processthat combines into a logical picture surrounding a person world. Thinking is inextricably linked with perception and memory. All the processes that characterize a person as a rational being have changed, developed and transformed for millennia. And if to begin with it was only necessary to apply physical strength, in order to satisfy their natural needs (food, reproduction and self-preservation), then over time a person has learned to build logical chains - to think in order to get the desired result with the application of less physical effort and harm to his health and life. To consolidate the obtained favorable result, memory began to develop - short-term, long-term, as well as other mental functions inherent in people - imagination, the ability to see the perspective, self-awareness. Symbiosis of disorders of perception and thinking - psychosensory disorders. In psychiatry, these disorders are divided into two main types:

• depersonalization can be manifested by incorrect sensations of one's body, the so-called mental depersonalization, and distorted concepts of one's own "I" - mental depersonalization;
• derealization manifests itself in a distorted perception of the surrounding world - space, time, dimensions, forms of the surrounding reality are perceived by the patient as distorted, although he is absolutely sure of the correctness of his own vision.

Thinking is a feature of a person. Reasonable thinking is subject to perceptual impairment. Psychiatry, as a field of clinical medicine, seeks to find ways to resolve the controversy caused by impaired perception in psychiatric patients. In case of perceptual disorders, patients also manifest thought disorders - delusions, obsessive or which become the meaning of such a person's life.

Psychiatry - complex science about mental illness of a person, the area of \u200b\u200bwhich is disorders of perception, memory, and thinking, as well as other mental functions. Moreover, any problems with mental health most often they are associated with a whole range of mental functions - from the work of the senses to short-term or long-term memory.

Why is the perception of reality impaired?

When faced with psychiatric problems, the question arises: what are the causes of perception disorders? There can be a whole complex of them: from alcohol and drug poisoning to pathological condition the human psyche. Mental illness it is quite difficult to diagnose, often this is due to the fact that a person cannot accurately describe his feelings, the events that happened to him or are happening, and initial stages diseases are not always noticeable to others. Perceptual disorders can develop as a result of any diseases of internal organs or systems, as well as due to a violation of the processing of the received information, its analysis and obtaining a specific result. Psychiatric practice at this moment cannot absolutely accurately determine the reasons for the development of a perception disorder, except for intoxication, when the mechanism of pathology is precisely determined by the poisonous substance. Violations of the perception of reality can and should cause alertness in the people around them, since often the patients themselves are in no hurry to turn to specialists, not considering these violations to be something pathological. A timely identified problem with the perception of the surrounding reality can help the patient to avoid serious problems. Distorted reality - a huge problem both for the patient and for the people around him, both mentally and physically.

Childhood fantasies and perceptual disorders

Child psychiatry and psychology is a special kind of medicine. Children are great dreamers and inventors, and the increased reactivity of the child's psyche and insignificant life experience do not give the child the opportunity to independently correct unreal feelings in time. That is why perceptual disorders in children are a special area of \u200b\u200bpedagogy, psychology and psychiatry. Visual and auditory illusions are one of the components of every person's childhood. A scary tale told at night becomes a real nightmare for the baby, hiding under the bed or in the closet. Most often, such disorders occur in the evening, the fatigue and drowsiness of the child affects. Scary Tales and stories, especially told to the baby at night, can become the basis for the development of a neurotic state. Hallucinations occur in children most often against the background of diseases of a somatic and infectious nature as a result of an increase in body temperature. The age of the most frequent manifestation of such disorders is 5-7 years. Hallucinations of this nature are elementary - sparks, contours or images of people, animals, and from the sounds children hear shouts, knocking, voices of birds or animals. All these visions are perceived by the child as a fairy tale.

Children of different ages may also suffer from manifestations of schizophrenia. In this case, all hallucinations take on a complex, often ominous character. The plot of hallucinations is complex, often dangerous for the health or even the life of the baby. For older children adolescence, and this is 12-14 years old, the development of gustatory and tactile hallucinations is characteristic, the child begins to refuse the previously favorite food, his character and behavior change.

IN special group pediatrics and child psychiatry distinguishes children with congenital cognitive impairments. In these cases, the child grows up and learns to compensate for the lack of some sensations by strengthening the development of others. sensory abilities... A classic example - a child with congenital hearing loss is distinguished by excellent vision, notices the smallest details, pays more attention to minor details of the surrounding reality.

Perception is the basis of cognition of the surrounding world in all its manifestations. In order to feel, man is given six senses and nine types of receptors. But in addition to sensations, the information received must be transferred to the appropriate parts of the brain, where it goes through the process of processing and analysis, compiling the overall picture reality based on a complex of sensations and life experience... The result of perception is a picture of the surrounding reality. Violations of at least one link in the chain of obtaining a picture of the world lead to a distortion of reality. Psychiatry as a field of clinical medicine studies the causes of the appearance, stages of development, signs and symptoms, methods of treatment and prevention of perception disorders, both of individual phenomena and components of general human health problems.