We introduce and study an alternative form of the chaotic expansion for counting processes using the Poisson imbedding representation; we name this alternative form \textit{pseudo-chaotic expansion}. As an application, we prove that the coefficients of this pseudo-chaotic expansion for any linear Hawkes process are obtained in closed form, whereas those of the usual chaotic expansion cannot be derived explicitly. Finally, we study further the structure of linear Hawkes processes by constructing an example of a process in a pseudo-chaotic form that satisfies the stochastic self-exciting intensity equation which determines a Hawkes process (in particular its expectation equals the one of a Hawkes process) but which fails to be a counting process.