Psychiatry and hearing voices
Last updated 11/06/2007
There appears to be an unbridgeable disagreement between the scientific community who understand the voices to be hallucinatory and a product of a deluded mind and those who regard them as something meaningful, real and even sometimes spiritual. As they say though, what one person considers to be an hallucination might be considered a revelation to another. Until recently science was firmly on the side of the view that the experience was meaningless and the probable sign of an illness, the idea that the “voices” meant something was dismissed as mysticism and plain silly.
This is because medical science has come to consider voices as a misinterpretation of reality made by a troubled mind. For surely to hear a voice that has no external cause has got to be a misunderstanding and a failure of reality checking by the mind? This conclusion leads not unreasonably to the obvious conclusion that there is something wrong with the hearer. Further it can also be said that as the voice hearers are sometimes unable to rely on their senses and cannot tell the difference between what they actually hear and what they are imagining, perhaps there is something wrong with their brain.
One idea is that perhaps the part of the brain responsible for language is failing to work as it should and is failing to recognise our ‘own’ inner voice, thinking instead that its origin lies outside the self. To explain a little more about this theory, psychiatrists for instance make a distinction between voices and other ‘hallucinations’ experienced when we are;
- Physically ill (feverish, senile, brain damaged etc.) - As a result of being drunk or under the influence of psycho-active drugs - When extremely frightened or suspicious of others talking about us - When we are about to wake up or fall asleep (all occasions when our imaginations are most active)
Voices that are experienced when we are fully conscious are regarded as being a sign of a severe psychological illness, what is known in psychiatry as a psychosis, one of the really taboo illnesses in modern society. This is generally believed by psychiatrists to be caused by illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and to be related to an inherited defect of the brain, which causes such a loss of contact with reality.
If you hear voices that speak about you or to you, especially in a derogatory manner and told a psychiatrist then you shouldn’t really be surprised that they would probably regard you as having one of the main symptoms of schizophrenia or some other serious psychiatric illness. Psychiatrists are trained to identify the form that the voice experience takes, from their point of view if you hear “people” speaking to you who aren’t there then you are hallucinating and for them that is the significant issue it is however, not a concern of theirs what the voices say. This is because psychiatry is preoccupied with the way the physical condition of the brain effects the way we think, therefore if our thoughts are causing problems then there might be something physically wrong with the brain.
A great deal of research is being carried into the way the brain functions to try out to find out what is causing symptoms such as voices, for if there is something wrong with the brain that causes psychological problems this may be more important then what is happening in your life. This has led psychiatric researchers to seek for a genetic cause as well as a range of other possible causes such as diet, chemical imbalance in the brain etc. These views of the cause of voices has resulted in psychiatry trying to refine and improve a range of drugs (sometimes called antipsychotics, neuroleptics or major tranquillisers) which whilst not curing people do help some people to feel less overwhelmed by their experience, although not without cost.
But are the psychiatrists right? On the face of it, the arguments seem quite convincing and it would appear that they on the right track. But are they? It must be pointed out that not all psychiatrists believe that hearing voices are caused by problems of the brain, for instance in France, in the past they regard schizophrenia (the illness most associated with voices) as being the result of family upbringing, whilst others (although a minority) doubt that the diverse symptoms that make up the illness known as schizophrenia are specific enough to be conclusive evidence of a distinct disease. However these arguments are old ones and although the biochemical and genetic explanations for schizophrenia (and by association for “voices” as well) have most favour at the moment and new theories are being proposed all the time, the science of the physical brain and its relationship to the mind is still in its infancy, right now nobody knows.
The key point though is to ask whether the theories and resultant treatments work for the people experiencing the problems? The answer at this stage has to be that they only work in a very limited way for a limited number of people and then not always satisfactorarily.
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