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Heine's Synaesthesia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Walter Silz*
Affiliation:
Swarthmore College

Extract

The phenomenon of synaesthesia has been much studied in recent years, both on its psychological and on its literary side. In the strict scientific sense, it consists in the arousing, by the stimulation of one sense, a concomitant sensation in another. Thus the man who always felt a pain in a certain tooth when a soprano sang off-key was a genuine synaesthetic. In such simple forms, modern investigators have shown, synaesthesia is a psychological “Urphänomen” and can be traced back to prehistoric times, though it became an object of scientific attention only with Newton's Opticks in 1704.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1942

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