In more recent uses of the term, vivid memory images have been described as eidetic images (Horowitz, 1970, p. 22), “an exceptionally vivid memory image that occurs immediately after the perception” (Hebb, 1972, p. 242), “the ability possessed by a minority of people to ‘see’ an image that is an exact copy of the original sensory experience” (Kagan & Havemann, 1972, p. 588), the “half-way house to hallucination” (Drever, 1964, p. 80). American psychologist Gordon Willard Allport formulated a similar definition and emphasized the “healthful” structure of the eidetic by stating “definition should be understood to exclude both pathological hallucinations and dream images, and to admit those spontaneous images of phantasy which, though possessed of perceptual character, cannot be said to be literally revivals or restorations of any specific perception.” (Allport, 1924, p. 100) In seeing an eidetic image, definite somatic events as well as a feeling of meaning are also present. The eidetic image is “seen” within the mind or literally seen externally. The eidetic image is not dependent on any prior experience, condition, state, or event. In a more general context, the eidetic can be defined as a normal subjective visual image experienced with noticeable vividness whether evoked by an actual external object or not. In Klüver's words, "the Eidetic Image has been identified in psychological literature as a vision, as a source for new thought and feeling, as a material picture in the mind which can be scanned by the person as he would scan a real current event in his environment, and as a potent, highly significant stimulus which arises from within the mind and throws it into a series of self-revealing imagery effects" (Klüver, 1932 Richardson, 1969 Ahsen, 1977).
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