This is a post on two unusual terms (pareidolia and apophenia) plus one other phrase which speaks for itself: auditory hallucinations. So, why am I discussing these terms at all and why now? The answer is that our society is currently stressed. And as the people in our society becomes unnerved, people on the margins of our communities are sliding or being pushed towards mental health issues. These issues include depression, anxiety, eating disorders and other psychological ailments. Many are untreated, either because they cannot afford treatment, or they cannot get in to see a mental health specialist, or perhaps they are not even aware that their anxiety, alienation, paranoia or antisocial behavior is so striking. Their small circle of friends–if they have any–may actually be reinforcing their paranoia and delusions. Perhaps until now, many neurotic individuals have been successful keeping their frets and fears under control. Until now. But now, these alienated individuals are taking more medication than usual, perhaps recreational drugs as well, and are positively hysterical over ordinary, everyday occurrences such as lights in the sky at night, or they furious at a perceived insult, enough to push some innocent tourist off a subway platform. The panic and paranoia is almost palpable in some groups.
So, while these terms I mentioned may seem to be obscure, innocuous, perhaps just curious phenomena in nature, they can take on fairly great importance in our lives and for greater society under the right circumstances. As far as pareidolia, apophenia are concerned, many of us have one or both of these two characteristics–more or less–but many others do not. The best way to start is to define the two terms, and I’ll include the clinical definitions, courtesy of AI.
“Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon characterized by the tendency of the human mind to perceive familiar patterns, such as faces or objects, in random or ambiguous stimuli. This can occur with visual input, such as seeing a face in the clouds, or auditory input, like hearing a familiar voice in random sounds. It is a subset of apophenia, which is the general human propensity to seek patterns and meaning in random data.
In medical and psychological contexts, pareidolia is often discussed in relation to perception, cognition, and the brain’s ability to recognize patterns, which can be linked to evolutionary advantages, such as social interaction and threat detection. While generally considered a harmless cognitive quirk, excessive or intrusive pareidolia, especially in the context of mental health conditions, may require clinical attention.”
So, a person with pareidolia might see a tree shaped like an old man, or they may hear words formed from a squeaky ceiling fan. That is, the noise from the fan may suggest some sort of “chant” spoken over and over. This is called auditory pareidolia and I’ve experienced this myself. Usually when normal people hear something like this, they are just squeaks, or they understand that the squeaks are coincidentally suggesting a phrase. Nothing more. Some people, however, might think that they are being commanded to take some sort of action.
There is an correlate to pareidolia called apophenia:
“Apophenia encompasses various related concepts, including pareidolia (seeing faces in inanimate objects) and other forms of pattern recognition. . . While this tendency is a normal aspect of human cognition, excessive or maladaptive apophenia may be associated with certain psychiatric conditions, such as schizophrenia or obsessive-compulsive disorder, where individuals may see patterns or connections that are illusory or non-existent.”
The best way to understand the difference between pareidolia and apophenia is with an example. A person may have pareidolia when a random rock formation resembles a human feature in their mind. Apophenia goes beyond that. It is when unrelated events take on predictive or causal relationships. As a humorous example, yesterday we had a winter weather warning for today. I heard comments about children wearing their pajamas inside out because they thought this would cause enough snowfall overnight to close the schools. Or, on a somber note, a candidate survives an assassination attempt, gets elected to a high office and concludes that he is chosen by God for some great purpose. Are pajamas worn inside out truly related to snow fall and school closures? Does surviving an attempt on your life by a deranged gunman or a escaping from a potentially deadly crash plus winning an election mean you were destined to win? Or act god-like?
Look at these string variables immediately below. If you are pareidolic, you should be able to solve the puzzle. What do they spell?
- Cyb3r 3sp10n4g3
- S0c14l M3d14 M1n1ng
- 4rt1f1c14l 1nt3ll1g3nc3
- 5ubm4r1n3 C4bl3 T4pp1ng
[The answers are as follows: “Cyber espionage;” “Social media mining;” “Artificial intelligence” and “Submarine cable tapping.”]
The examples provide just enough consonants for an average person’s mind to generate a thought. Your brain disregards the numbers to complete the thought, even though the words are not spelled out explicitly. So, your brain synthesizes missing data to complete the thought. This is not an IQ indicator. It just shows how your mind approaches a problem.
Apophenia encompasses pareidolia, but it goes way beyond that. Pareidolia is more likely to be “normal” behavior while apophenia is more likely to be a sign of schizophrenia or some other mental health issues, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder. However, do not rush your children to the paediatric clinic if they are wearing their night clothing inside out. That mild degree of apophenia is perfectly normal. I might have tried it myself if I knew about it years ago when I was teaching. Why do these phenomena exist? Evolutionists believe that pareidolia and apophenia were useful in the days of dinosaurs and jungles where danger lurked behind every rock and tree. It had to do with the fight or flight response and things like that. Being safe rather than being sorry.
GUIDED BY VOICES
One other thing I want to discuss in this post, and that involves auditory hallucinations. Ten percent of the population in the U.S. hear voices that others do not hear. Hearing voices can be, but not always is, indicative of a mental health disorder. A person’s culture can also come into play here. For example:
“A cross-cultural study reported higher frequency of auditory verbal hallucinations that were commanding, abusive, cursing, arguing, and frightening among European [when] compared to West African patients.”
Yet, Africans are more likely to have visual hallucinations than Europeans as noted in the same study. And we don’t know why.
THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT
Now more than ever, people are rooted to their cellphones. These are marvelous technological devices. I remember having a Palm PDA back in 1994 or so while watching a trailer for a movie as I stood in line at a pharmacy. People around me were amazed that I could call up part of an actual movie on a miniature handheld device. Navigating while driving has come a long way since TomTom first started producing their tiny, stick-on window screens. But there are always people alienated by innovation, and they frequently adopt irrational thinking about the world around them. They may feel powerless and they certainly are fearful. In the absence of science and technology, superstition always seems to fill that vacuum (witness the Twilight series of books and movies, interest in the occult and so on.
More and more people in our post-pandemic world are describing encounters with shapeless phantoms that are hard to describe. These apparitions are believed by some of them to be spirits or other spooky things that are featured in horror movies. These shades are black, with indistinct shapes that dart quickly out of the edge of a person’s visual field when observed. Witnesses say they feel a sense of fear or dread when seeing such a phenomenon. But there well might be a more prosaic explanation for their appearance.
BENADRYL, TANTUM AND VERDE (OH! MY!)
In fact, what they are seeing might be a by-product of our modern formulary of available medications. Deliriant medications like ordinary Benadryl which contains diphenhydramine and NSAIDs such as Tantum Verde or Difflam with benzydamine can cause people to see exactly what is described above. These chemicals stimulate parts of the brain, particularly the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) to create illusions. That’s not the purpose of the drugs, of course. It is a possible side effect, however. People with schizophrenia, paranoia, bipolar disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder also report seeing “shadow people” and in these cases do not need any chemical assist for this to happen. Stimulating the TPJ (circled in black in the illustration) and immediate area around it can cause psych patients to recall “memories” such as being abducted by extraterrestrials and other forms of “close encounters” according to the Annals of Psychiatry and Treatment. These recollections then appear to be rooted in false memories. Another possible false memory might be what is known as Satanic ritual abuse. This is not to say that everyone who sees a shadowy figure is taking Benadryl or is schizophrenic. Nor is it to say that Satanism and witchcraft does not exist today. We should always look for mundane explanations and reach rational, reasonable conclusions before we search for the unusual. And Christians should anchor their thinking to the revealed Word of God.
WHY PEOPLE HEAR VOICES
Many famous people in history claim to have heard voices speaking to them, including Augustine of Hippo (354-430); Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827); Sigmund Freud (1856-1939); Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) and Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) to name just a few. Personally, I have heard voices on several occasions as I describe here.
Children who have imaginary friends will often say that their friends talk to them. This may just be a phase they go through where they have some heightened imagination, or they have a serious issue (e.g., divorce in the family) they need to work out. I had a student once who was referred to me by her teacher. She said she heard voices every time she stuck her head in a certain front-loading clothes dryer in her dormitory. But “her” voices did not order her to end her life and fortunately they did not mention me.
WHY PEOPLE ACT ON WHAT THEIR VOICES SAY
Not everyone who hears hallucinatory voices acts on them. But some do, and for a variety of reasons. For example, they may believe that God or His angels or saints are speaking to them. Joan of Arc, née Jeanne d’Ay de Domrémy (1412-1431) is a good example. Joan believed that famous saints (e.g. Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret) as well as the Archangel Michael spoke to her. She said variously “I do not know how to make myself understood. I hear them [voices] as one hears a human voice, but I do not see them.” She meant she did not see whomever was talking to her. On another occasion, she noted “I heard the voice of a saint, who told me to go to France, and that I would be helped by the King’s army” and “I do not fear the voices, for they direct me according to God’s will.” She acted as her voices instructed and because of her leadership, the French repulsed the English in the Hundred Years War. She was—and is still seen as—the savior of France in some symbolic way. She was burnt to death as a witch while still a teenager, but subsequently canonized (in 1920.)
Once the person trusts the voice or recognizes its authority, then that person usually complies with whatever the voice suggests or demands (such as to kill Queen Victoria.) Sometimes the voice takes on the persona of a deceased relative and this is another reason a person may act. Hamlet, for example, hears the voice of his father commanding him to avenge his death. Horatio, Bernardo and Marcellus can see the ghost of Hamlet’s father, but only Hamlet can hear it. Likewise, Paul heard a voice on his way to Damascus but his company could not understand that the noise they heard was actually a voice (Acts 22:9.)
People who hear voices are sometimes lonely, or stressed. In these instances, a person may act on a voice if they have no reason not to. Perhaps they are considering two equally possible outcomes and they are indecisive. Hearing a voice might be interpreted as a hunch and they may make a choice based on that hunch.
Some of the most powerful and persuasive voices people hear are accusatory. They attempt to convince the person that the person is fundamentally “bad,” as in beyond redemption, worthless, a burden to others. Often, the voices suggest or order the person to end his or her life, and possibly the life of another. These voices and impulses are difficult for a person with few ego resources or a sound mind to resist. Schizophrenia is one of the most common causes of accusatory.
My point in this post is to suggest that there should be an awareness in ordinary people to treat preposterous speculation and behavior with skepticism, no matter who it is that spouts it. People with psychotic disorders can be very compelling. I had a week of clinicals once with a class of students and I saw this distinguished looking patient in the sort of ill-fitting gown patients wear while in a hospital. He was pushing an IV pole around the area where the elevators were. And as you know, you don’t see many impressive patients walking around in a nightie that opens in the back. But I noticed he was on telemetry, which suggested to me that he was a cardiac patient. A day or two later he walks up to me and say “Are you in charge of these students?” I replied that I was. Then, he said to me “I have a real treat to share with them. The President is landing in Air Force One at two p.m. today. I can get you and your students through security if they’d like to meet him.” I was a bit shocked, and asked him how he knew the President was flying in because it had not been announced. He said was with the Secret Service detail so he had privileged information. All along, I had pidgeonholed him as a cardiac patient, but then I realized he was really a psych patient with heart problems as well. If I had known he was a psych patient to begin with, he would not have been able to carry his ruse quite so far and would not have been so convincing.
Mental health care (including counseling) should be easily available to all. Psychotropic drugs which sometimes cost hundreds of dollars for a week’s supply should be subsidized in some way so that people who need the medicine can have access to it. Getting them to take their medicine is a different problem altogether. The easy access to assault weapons in our society makes it highly likely that some great harm will follow at some point in the future. This is not necessarily inevitable, however, if we insist that Congress take appropriate action now.