House. From cellar to garret. Significance of the hut -- House and universe -- Drawers, chests and wardrobes -- Nests -- Shells -- Corners -- Miniature -- Intimate immensity -- Dialectics of outside and inside -- Phenomenology of roundness.

Isolated sleep paralysis is a common parasomnia characterized by an inability to move or speak and often accompanied by hallucinations of a sensed presence nearby. Recent research has linked ISP, and sensed presence more particularly, with social anxiety and other psychopathologies. The present study used a large sample of respondents to an internet questionnaire to test whether these associations are due to a general personality factor, affect distress, which is implicated in nightmare suffering and hypothesized to involve dysfunctional social imagery (...) processes. A new measure, ISP distress, was examined in relation to features of ISP experiences, to self-reported psychopathological diagnosis, to scores on the Leibowitz Social Anxiety Scale and to scores on a new questionnaire subscale assessing social imagery in a variety of waking states. Three main results were found: ISP experiences are only weakly associated with a prior diagnosis of mental disorder, sensed presence during ISP is associated preferentially with ISP distress, and ISP distress is associated with dysfunctional social imagery. A general predisposition to affective distress may influence the distress associated with ISP experiences; overly passive social imagery may, in turn, be implicated in this affect distress influence. (shrink)

Cheyne and Girard characterize felt presence during sleep paralysis attacks as a pre-hallucinatory expression of a threat-activated vigilance system. While their results may be consistent with this interpretation, they are nonetheless correlational and do not address a parsimonious alternative explanation. This alternative stipulates that FP is a purely spatial, hallucinatory form of a common cognitive phenomenon—social imagery—that is often, but not necessarily, linked with threat and fear and that may induce distress among susceptible individuals. The occurrence of both fearful and (...) non-fearful FPs in a multiplicity of situations other than sleep paralysis attacks supports the notion that FPs are hallucinatory variants of social imagery and that they are not necessarily bound to threat-activated vigilance. Evidence linking FPs with anxiety disorders supports the notion that the distress they evoke may be mediated by a more general affective distress personality factor. To illustrate the predominantly spatial character of FP hallucinations, similarities between FP and phantom limbs are summarized and the possibility that these two phenomena are parallel expressions of a mirror neuron system is considered. (shrink)