Concept
Negative hallucination
The failure to perceive something that is present, the counterpart of the positive hallucination that perceives what is absent. Freud touched on it in connection with hypnosis and in his metapsychology of dreams; André Green made it a central notion, holding that the infant's negative hallucination of the mother, once her care has been taken in, leaves a framing structure, an empty space in which representations can then form, while where this fails a blank appears in place of thought.
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developed by
- André Green Taking up Freud's notion, Green made the negative hallucination of the mother the basis of the framing structure: the mother's erased presence becomes an empty frame within which the child can represent and think.