Lilliputian hallucination

a visual hallucination of objects, animals, or people greatly reduced in size, which may result from a number of conditions, such as delirium tremens, typhoid, or brain tumors in the temporal lobe. The name is derived from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), in which Gulliver journeys to the imaginary land of Lilliput, populated by tiny people. Also called diminutive visual hallucination; microptic hallucination. See also micropsia.

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Psychology term of the day

February 23rd 2025

radical feminism

a branch of feminist thought that holds as its main tenets that (a) the oppression of women is pandemic, the most fundamental of all historical instances of oppression, and thus a paradigm case of oppression; (b) because the oppression of women is systemic and ubiquitous, sweeping social change is the only remedy radical enough to overcome it; (c) traditional gender roles are constraining to both sexes and ought to be overcome; (d) biology should not determine the destiny or shape the lives of women; and (e) consciousness raising, in which women come to see their personal problems as symptomatic, is the beginning of liberation. These tenets have been adopted in one form or another by many strains of feminism.