(1849-1889)
A Russian psychiatrist known for his many contributions to hallucinations research, who was himself admitted to a psychiatric hospital on various occasions while experiencing *visual hallucinations. Kandinsky was diagnosed as suffering from melancholia, but he himself was of the opinion that his diagnosis should have been 'primary insanity'. In later years, he changed his own diagnosis to *paranoia hallucinatoria. Victor Kandinsky was the cousin of the famous expressionist painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), who may himself have been familiar with * synaesthesias. The import of Victor Kandinsky's work for hallucinations research lies in the combination of his first-hand acquaintance with hallucinatory phenomena, and his exceptional talent for verbalizing and analysing his experiences.
This combination places him in a league with other hallucinating intellectuals, such as Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911), John Thomas Perce-val (1803-1876), Christoph Friedrich Nicolai (1733-1811), Vaslav Nijinsky (1889-1950), Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), Fjodor Dosto-evsky (1821-1881), and Ludwig Staudenmaier (1865-1933).
References
Kandinsky, V. (1881). Zur Lehre von den Halluzinationen. Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten, 11, 453-464.
Kandinsky, V. (1885). Kritische und klinische Betrachtungen im Gebiete der Sinnestäuschungen. Erste und zweite Studie. Berlin: Verlag von Friedländer und Sohn.
Lerner, V., Witztum, E. (2003). Victor Kandinsky, MD: Psychiatrist, researcher and patient. History of Psychiatry, 14, 103-111.
Dictionary of Hallucinations. J.D. Blom. 2010.