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The abstract designs—providing clues?
Returning to the abstract images, it is understandable
that they have received less attention
than those of animals and people. They are very
numerous, but are often small and have proved
opaque to interpretation. Perhaps the most attentive
scholar has been S. Giedion, the Swiss
historian. He believed that “symbolization is the
key to all paleolithic art,” 8p79 and he points out
that the “great abstract symbols which have no
counterpart in the world of reality” are often
“hidden away in the most inaccessible parts of the
caverns.” 8p241 While the meanings of female pubic
triangles and vulvas as well as penile images are
easy to understand in terms of fertility and procreative
symbolism, this is not true of the abstract
designs. What then?
Lewis-Williams thinks they are hallucinations,
conjured up by shamans in trances, which
provided powerful spiritual experiences of the
San People’s three-tiered cosmos, and which
were later displayed as rock art—petrographs and
petroglyphs. 5 This is a concept worth considering.
The hallucination approach
This is a complicated subject indeed. The
very long list of conditions associated with visual
hallucinations includes ocular disorders, CNS
disorders, toxic disturbances, psychiatric illnesses,
and “normal” persons. 9 In the context of
images hidden in large, dark caves, it is of interest
that a number of the hallucinogenic scenarios
in “normal” persons involve forms of sensory
deprivations. These include dreams, hypnagogic
and hypnotic states, sleep deprivation, and simply
blindfolding. To this list should now be added a
relatively new syndrome.
The Charles Bonnet Syndrome
This condition has a curious history. 10 Bonnet,
born in 1720, was a Swiss/French naturalist and
philosopher. (He deserves more recognition for
his experiments in wood lice, establishing the phenomenon
of parthenogenesis.) In 1760 he wrote a book in which he
described how his eighty-seven-year-old grandfather lost his
vision to cataracts and developed hallucinations “of men, of
women, of birds, of carriages, of buildings.” Interestingly, the
same later happened to Bonnet himself.
The situation lay fallow until 1967 when George de Morsier
proposed the term Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS) to describe
the presence of recurrent visual hallucinations generally
in persons with impaired vision but without clouded
sensoria. Such persons are often elderly. Since then, the
syndrome has been increasingly recognized and studied. 11 It
is present in perhaps ten percent of the elderly with impaired
vision.
The hallucinations experienced are varied and often complex,
in contrast to “unformed” hallucinations such as spots
and flashes of light, which are termed “phosgenes.” They include
animals, humans, geometric figures, and designs, similar
to what is seen in the caves. They are in color or black and
white, and are often brilliant and clear, contrasting with the
poor “regular” vision of the subjects. They frequently fade or
disappear as sight deteriorates further. The commonest cause
of CBS in our society is age-related macular degeneration,
but it has been reported in the young and also in association
with pathological changes from the eye to the visual cortex.
To diagnose CBS, there should be no evidence of delirium,
dementia, psychosis, or intoxication. The visions are not felt
to originate in the eye itself. 11
It is well-known that hallucinations with a normal sensorium
may be provoked or aggravated by a number of factors
including sensory deprivation, the hypnagogic state, physical
or auditory stimuli, extreme pain, etc. 9 The same is true of
CBS.
The pathophysiology of CBS—the release
phenomenon
The idea that hallucinations may be caused by “irritative”
foci in the brain derives by analogy from John Hughlings
Jackson’s analysis of focal epilepsy. This explanation for hallucinations
has generally given way more recently to the
work of David Cogan 12 (who also refers to Louis J. West 13 )
that suggests that hallucinations of various types are instead
“release phenomena.” Interestingly, this concept also derives
from Hughlings Jackson, who developed the general concept
that higher functional layers of the CNS normally inhibit
lower layers. When, however, the higher layers are themselves
impaired, normally suppressed activities of the lower layers
are released. (Consider the spasticity of the pithed frog or
alcohol-induced misbehavior.) In the visual system, normal afferent
stimuli dampen or block the spontaneous “endovision”
activities. But when, in some people, blindness “deafferents”
the visual pathways, the spontaneous endovisual activities take
over, leading to hallucinations. In fact, fMRI studies support
this concept. 14
Hallucination manifestations
Many studies of hallucination point out similarities in the
images that are seemingly independent of the cause and the
culture involved. Heinrich Klüver, with an extensive experience
primarily associated with mescal studies, wrote of three
stages of evolving hallucinations 15 :
Type I—“Form constants,” namely geometric abstract designs
described as gratings, lattices, fretwork; also tunnels,
alleys, vessels; and spirals.
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