A patient with a history of hallucinogenic drug use describes recalling a scene from months earlier with an unusually vivid, almost picture-like clarity, but is entirely clear that this is a memory of something she genuinely saw at the time, not a current perception of something happening now. What is this?

This is eidetic imagery: a visual memory of unusually vivid, near-hallucinatory clarity, distinguished from ordinary visual recall by its striking, picture-like intensity, here explicitly recognised by the patient as a memory rather than a current perception. It is not a visual hallucination, since the experience here is recognised as a memory of something previously seen, rather than a current perception of something not actually present. It is not a flashback, which involves a fuller, more intrusive re-experiencing of an event, not simply an unusually vivid visual memory recalled voluntarily. And it is not confabulation, which involves invented memory content, not an accurate, if unusually vivid, recollection of something genuinely seen.