I’m curious about the potential for co-morbidities in synaesthetes. My interest in the psychological and neurological conditions that are concurrent with synaesthesia is rooted in my own family’s diffuse weirdness, and amplified by the fascinating line up at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland for UKSA2016. Duncan Carmichael PhD (University of Sussex) presented on “The Health of Synaesthetes: What conditions are co-morbid with synaesthesia?” Dr. Carmichael’s work intrigues me; I’m quite certain future research will reveal many neurological, psychological, and somatosensory differences between people who have synaesthesia, and those without this variant. Additionally, Carol Steen, MFA (Touro College) offered a brilliant glimpse into her experiences with hypnagogia via her collaborative paper with Noam Sagiv PhD (Centre for Cognition and Neuroimaging, Brunel University) titled “Synesthestic and Hypnagogic Imagery, a Comparison”. Accompanying Steen and Sagiv’s presentation were immaculately detailed illustrations of hypnagogic imagery created by Ms. Steen. Those images were wondrous in their symmetry and beauty.
Hypnagogia is particularly pertinent to me this evening, December 24th, 2016. I’ve had hypnagogic hallucinations throughout my life, but none of these episodes has been as protracted and as memorable as those from my early childhood. And, there is a specific sequence of hallucinatory images from Christmas Eve, 1971 that continues to awe me with its intersection between the dreamworld and reality.
I went to sleep that evening with my elder sister Elizabeth, the two of us sharing her double bed, both of us positively stoked at the thought of Santa Claus prowling through our home, depositing gifts under the noble fir, and stuffing our stockings with trinkets. We couldn’t stop talking, even though our parents had threatened to part us and send me back to the room I shared with my younger sibling. Eventually, Beth drifted off, as did I. But, at some point that night, I wakened, at least partially. I sat up and gazed out the window, where I envisioned a repeating sequence of imagery, Santa in his sleigh, pulled by galloping reindeer, who traipsed across my visual field from right to left. They looked somewhat like Indonesian shadow puppets, although the contrast was reversed, with my hallucinatory images appearing in bright white against a black background. Every few minutes, Santa and his sleigh were replaced by large blocks that moved from bottom to top and then back. I’d count them off..one, two three four five…and back again…five four three two one. Then, Santa would reappear with his reindeer team, moving across the neighbor’s rooftops in an illusory journey.
When I awoke on Christmas morning I was too excited to tell my mother and father what had transpired the night before. I thought that I’d perhaps seen the elusive St. Nick, although even at six, I recognized that the images I witnessed were not realistic. My visions had a phantasmagoric quality, a transparency and luminosity that stood in stark contrast to the stolid suburban landscape over which they were transposed. I decided to keep quiet, another hallmark of my young life, my tremendous reticence about revealing my disconcerting sensorium. I only recently shared this story with my older sister. Beth corroborated the layout of our early childhood home and a Christmas Eve spent huddled together in her bedroom awaiting a midnight visitation.
Forty-five years later I still have hypnagogic hallucinations, but they seem to be a bit quiescent at this time. When I do have them, they’re most likely to show as form constants, detailed geometric shapes that wake me from early sleep and scintillate in the air above my body. I do occasionally have auditory hypnagogia: ringing doorbells, a phantom voice calling my name, buzzing telephone notifications and alarms. I’ve never again envisioned Santa Claus and his reindeer coursing through a darkened sky. But, perhaps tonight…
