Hearing Voices

When soft voices die: auditory verbal hallucinations and a four letter word (love)

by Simon McCarthy-Jones

Co-authored with Prof Larry Davidson, Yale University.

The phenomenology of inner speech: comparison of schizophrenia patients with auditory verbal hallucinations and healthy controls

by Simon McCarthy-Jones

The roles of thought suppression and metacognitive beliefs in proneness to auditory verbal hallucinations in a non-clinical sample

by Simon McCarthy-Jones

Neural correlates of inner speech and auditory verbal hallucinations: A critical review and theoretical integration

by Simon McCarthy-Jones

Talking back to the spirits: the voices and visions of Emanuel Swedenborg

by Simon McCarthy-Jones

A phenomenological survey of auditory verbal hallucinations in the hypnagogic and hypnopompic states

by Simon McCarthy-Jones

Voices from the storm: a critical review of quantitative studies of auditory verbal hallucinations and childhood sexual abuse

by Simon McCarthy-Jones

Taking Back the Brain: Could Neurofeedback Training Be Effective for Relieving Distressing Auditory Verbal Hallucinations in Patients With Schizophrenia?

by Simon McCarthy-Jones

Mental distress: Strategies of sense-making

by Mario Cardano

The irruption of severe mental distress into the life of an individual determines a deep biographical disruption. To... more The irruption of severe mental distress into the life of an individual determines a deep biographical disruption. To cope with this crisis, individuals are involved in a laborious sense-making activity, through the composition of narratives intended to create a new link between past, present and future. This essay analyses the sense-making strategies that follow this dramatic experience through the comparison of four illness narratives composed by Italian participants. The narratives are selected from a broader textual corpus in a way that authorizes their connotation as ‘flesh and blood’ ideal types. These narratives illustrate three kinds of explanation for the outset of mental distress: the biomedical adopted by Vito; the spiritual-religious adopted by Marta; and the psycho-social adopted by Giacomo. Vito, Marta and Giacomo are still inside the story they are telling, and compose the events by observing them through the eyes of a patient, qualifying their diversity as a stigma. The fourth narrative is different, composed by Serena, a ‘voices hearer’ who comes to terms with her voices not by silencing them with drugs, but by accepting them as a charisma that has transformed her into a medium and, on final analysis, a balanced woman.

‘Special’ Treatment, ‘Special’ Rights: Dis/abled Children as Doubly Diminished Identities

by China Mills

Oxford Current Legal Issues 'Law and Childhood', Vol. 14. Oxford University Press. (forthcoming, March 2012).

This paper will explore how the statistically ‘normal’ child of neo-liberal developmental psychology colonises legal... more This paper will explore how the statistically ‘normal’ child of neo-liberal developmental psychology colonises legal understandings of dis/abled children, drawing spatial and topographical boundaries between those within and those outside of childhood (Rose 1999).  This silences childhoods that don't 'fit', rendering them doubly diminished, and becomes the standard norm by which all childhood is judged (Pupavac 2002), permeating legal decisions around who gets to be born and how dis/abled children get to live.  In examining legal assumptions around abortion, genetic screening and medical treatment for children labelled as mentally ill, I will explore how the law, as a system of normativities, performs material and discursive violence on the (un)lived experiences of those children who push the law to the point rupture. I will thus address the assertion that ‘the principal organising binary [in children’s lives] is no longer legal and illegal, but normal and abnormal’ (Shildrick, 2005:32). 

The experience of hearing voices: An interpretative phenomenological analysis

by Adrian Coyle

Co-authored with Ben Knudson. Published in 2002 in Existential Analysis, 13(1), 117-134. A manuscript version of this paper can be downloaded from http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1713/1/fulltext.pdf

This article presents an analysis of two case studies of people who hear voices. In accordance with a phenomenological... more This article presents an analysis of two case studies of people who hear voices. In accordance with a phenomenological approach, the meanings which the participants attribute to their voices are highlighted in the analysis (specifically in relation to the nature and origin of the voices) and the influence which these interpretations have on their efforts at managing and reducing their disruptive effects is explored. It is concluded that if this analysis has accessed general processes in voice hearers’ experiences, therapeutic practitioners may need to work with voice hearers in promoting psychologically satisfying meaning-making around their experiences, from which contextualised responses to managing the voices can be developed.

Hearing voices and others within

by Kevin Magill

A short, unresearched, wildly speculative and rather weird paper presented at a symposium on ‘Radical Otherness’ at the University of Wolverhampton, 17th November 2010

Considers the possibility that there might be something to be said in favour of hearing voices (i.e. hearing voices in... more Considers the possibility that there might be something to be said in favour of hearing voices (i.e. hearing voices in the absence of other people or audio equipment), or of having a sense of an inner presence.