Functional Blindness: A Construction of Cognitive and Social Influences

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Abstract
Functional blindness represents the reported loss of visual awareness in the absence of organic reasons to explain the impaired vision. We review the empirical research on two major forms of functional blindness: Hypnotic blindness and visual conversion disorder. In both conditions there is convergent evidence that individuals can process visual information despite phenomenal blindness. Further, there is strong evidence that both the experience of blindness and the behaviour of individuals during blindness can be influenced by cognitive and social factors. We propose a model that conceptualises functional blindness as a dissociation between episodic and semantic representations of visual information. We argue that functionally blind individuals are best understood as active problem-solvers who respond to situational cues and personal needs in the development and maintenance of their experiential blindness. Although we recognise the inherent differences between hypnotic blindness and visual conversion disorder, we propose that hypnotic blindness offers a useful paradigm to investigate core issues of dissociated awareness.