Records of people experiencing verbal hallucinations or 'hearing voices' can be found throughout history. Voices of Reason, Voices of Insanity examines almost 2,800 years of these reports including Socrates, Schreber and Pierre Janet's "Marcelle", to provide a clear understanding of the experience and how it may have changed over the millenia. Through six cases of historical and contemporary voice hearers, Leudar and Thomas demonstrate how the experience has metamorphosed from being a sign of virtue to a sign of insanity, signalling such illnesses as schizophrenia or dissociation.They argue that the experience is interpreted by the voice hearer according to social categories conveyed through language, and is therefore best studied as a matter of language use. Controversially, they conclude that 'hearing voices' is an ordinary human experience which is unfortunately either mystified or pathologised.Voices of Reason, Voices of Insanity offers a fresh perspective on this enigmatic experience and will be of interest to students, researchers and clinicians alike.
Author(s): Ivan Leuder
Edition: 1
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 240
Book Cover......Page 1
Half-Title......Page 2
Title......Page 3
Copyright......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
Acknowledgements......Page 7
Introduction......Page 8
1 The daemon of Socrates......Page 14
On the history of the concept of hallucination......Page 15
The sign of Socrates......Page 21
What the daemon of Socrates could do with words......Page 31
2 The gods of Achilles......Page 34
Julian Jaynes on gods and voices......Page 35
Social action in the Iliad......Page 39
The gods and heroes in the Iliad......Page 45
The voices of Achilles......Page 51
3 The souls of Daniel Paul Schreber......Page 58
Schreber’s personifications of the supernatural......Page 59
The modality of Schreber’s interactions with the supernatural......Page 60
What did Schreber’s voices say to him?......Page 62
Mixing metaphors in the Court......Page 65
4 Pierre Janet on verbal hallucinations......Page 74
5 Pragmatists on self......Page 94
William James on consciousness of self......Page 95
Mead on the socially reflexive self......Page 102
Are voices mutations of self?......Page 108
6 Verbal hallucinations in contemporary psychiatry......Page 112
Hearing voices and psychopathology......Page 113
Voices and therapists......Page 123
Behavioural interventions......Page 125
Information processing interventions......Page 126
Cognitive therapy for voices......Page 127
Focusing interventions......Page 130
7 Working with voices......Page 132
The participants......Page 134
Dialogical properties of Peg’s voices......Page 136
Voice 2—My ‘Little Devil’......Page 137
Peg’s Journal: excerpt 2......Page 139
Peg’s Journal: excerpt 4......Page 141
Peg’s Journal: excerpt 5......Page 142
Peg’s Journal: excerpt 6......Page 143
Peg’s Journal: excerpt 7......Page 145
Follow-up......Page 147
8 The frenzy of Anthony Smith......Page 150
Voices in British national newspapers......Page 151
The frenzy of Anthony Smith......Page 154
Voices in the House of Commons......Page 167
9 Voice-talk......Page 174
On what voices do with words......Page 176
Voices as speech......Page 177
Individuation and personification in voice-talk......Page 183
Participant positioning of voice-talk......Page 188
Sequential properties of voice-talk......Page 192
On mundane reality testing......Page 201
10 Conclusion......Page 208
Notes......Page 212
Bibliography......Page 218
Index......Page 228
