[1] Born in Siberia into a wealthy family of businessmen, Victor Kandinsky is regarded as a significant figure in Russian psychiatry, particularly for his contributions to the understanding of hallucinations.

[3] Kandinsky’s personal physician diagnosed him with melancholia,[4] but he self-identified his condition as primäre Verrücktheit (German for "primary paranoid psychosis"),[5][6] which is anachronistically associated with modern concepts of schizophrenia-like disorders.

In 1885, he published a German-language book titled "Kritische und klinische Betrachtungen im Gebiete der Sinnestäuschungen" (Critical and Clinical Considerations in the Area of Hallucinations), detailing his personal experiences with pseudohallucinations.

His monograph "On Pseudohallucinations" (Russian: О псевдогаллюцинациях) published posthumously in 1890, described a condition characterised by alienation from personal mental processes, along with delusions of control by external forces.

This condition was later termed Kandinsky–Clérambault syndrome, after Kandinsky and French psychiatrist Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault, who also independently studied and described similar symptoms.