Explain why eidetic imagery is classified as a memory phenomenon rather than as a form of hallucination, despite its unusually intense, almost hallucinatory quality.

The classification hinges on what the patient's own experience is anchored to: eidetic imagery is always recognised by the patient as a recollection of something they genuinely saw before, however unusually vivid and picture-like the recall may be, whereas a hallucination occurs with no such memory content behind it, presenting instead as a current perception. Even though the intensity of an eidetic image can approach that of a genuine perceptual experience, its status as a recognised memory, deliberately or spontaneously recalled rather than perceived as happening now, is what places it among the memory phenomena rather than the perceptual disorders, and this distinction matters clinically for how the experience is interpreted and further assessed.