Firstly, many more people hear voices, and hear many more kinds of voices, than is usually assumed. The second is that auditory hallucination — or “voice-hearing,” our preference — should be thought of not as a pathological phenomenon in need of eradication but as a meaningful, interpretable experience, intimately linked to a hearer’s life story and, more commonly than not, to unresolved personal traumas.
Hearing voices is the best term that we have found to date and it is the way most people who have this experience refer to it.
There are many different ways to hear voices. Voices can be experienced in the head, from outside the head or even in the body. It may be one voice or many voices. The voice may talk to you or about you.
There are other ways to hear voices, some of them make the phrase “hearing voices” a poor description and perhaps one day we will have to come up with a better one – because it is never the same for everyone. Some people for instance, experience non verbal thoughts, images and visions, tastes, smells and touch. All with no physical cause and all sensations they didn’t call into being themselves.
In English there is no technical psychiatric term for the subjective experience of hearing the thoughts or inner speech in a conversational form, whilst the term auditory hallucinations’ is inaccurate as it gives the impression that the experience is unreal and meaningless.
The English language though makes references to the experience in other ways, for instance the word Vocation means to follow a calling, originally meaning to be called by the voice of God and to act on it. This is not necessarily what most people mean when they say they have a vocation, but that’s the root meaning of the word. Further, the word Panic comes from the experience of the Athenians who heard the voice of Pan during a battle that so frightened their enemy that they scattered from the battlefield. Further the word Apocalypse is the Greek word for revelation, which is the discovery of unknown truth as revealed by visions or voices and in Biblical terms as they were revealed to John.
We definitely need a new name – ‘hearing voices’ is such a one dimensional, narrow description of the phenomenon.
How about Invasive Sensory Perception?
It’s a much broader sensory experience than just hearing voices… I hear them, they ‘hear’ my every thought… (hearing based) so it is a two way conversation with sentient ‘beings’ of some description. They tune in to your senses and can see what you see (sight based).
They have caused dreams and visions… and talk about them both before and after… they have created physical effects (physical based, including touch and more), kept me awake for days on end (by causing reflex responses – based on the autonomous nervous system).
They know things I don’t… they can see things that are happening nearby that I am about to come across – I don’t mean they see the future, though they like to give that impression – only that they can see something as it is happening nearby, that I can’t yet see.
They work in teams, they imitate, they do their best to confuse and instil fear (leading to paranoia, until you realize they have no power)… the ‘good’ voices make you believe you are special and can do anything with their help (leading to delusions of grandeur until you realize it is nonsense).
They sense the slightest change in emotion. They sense electrical activity – knowing for example when I am about to receive a text message, though they don’t know what is in it (though they sometimes try to make you think they do).
In my case there was a progression… at first I could hear them talking about me, but they did not realize I could hear them. Soon they realized I could hear them… then they became bossy… and soon after that they learned to tune into my thoughts, some better than others…. which gave us the two way channel., and at which point they became downright evil.
It took much longer before they created dreams, visions and then involuntary physical responses in me…. just to show that they could, in response to my saying to friends that I had experienced little in the way of visions.
They have used tactics and strategies that have got more complex over time… becoming very creative in the ‘stories’ they use to try and intimidate me, to create the impression that they have power (which they don’t). They take breaks to go away and develop their tactics and stories before coming back a few hours later to try again.
I have experienced both evil (in the very worst sense of the word) and ‘good voices…. though the sheer invasiveness and relentlessness of it eventually made me decide that even the ‘good’ voices were awful.
I can’t quite find the label that covers the spectru of experience, which as you can see goes beyond even the five senses., But ‘invasive sensory perception’ would be better than ‘hearing voices’… it’s similar to extra sensory perception…. except of course that it is extremely unpleasant and unwelcome…. and is forced on you rather than voluntary… hence invasive as well as ‘extra’.
My name is Randy and I have been estranged from life itself for over 17 years…the first thing that started were the voices and terror when I was in Florida in 1995-96 which eventuallty landed me hospitalized and put in a straight jacket under cameras in a strange triangular room…The shot to the buttocks did no effect.
I am feeling, touching and tasting, smelling, all physical and essential choices that otherwise should be governed by my choice are now governed by something that is predicting in a timetable that is not within my grasp yet it is with my being activating all choices of mind,body and spirit from without me.
I am learning that it is being cuased on a time table the uses past time for future time and future time for past time…I am not sure if it were safe to say that it is being essentially (eternal) I am living according to its principle whether I chose to believe or not..it measures collectively but for the most part after so many years it has run out of measures that concern my life and now has turnedf to measures outside of me through people,places and things..
I am getting ready to make a doctors appointment and what bothers me is medicine can not define what this is that has put me away by its freedom rather then the freedom I once use to have over 17 years ago.
I have read some of the psychosis, Schysophrenia, and such medical logistics and boy do I wish it were as simple as the medical profession states its nature, and methods of treatment..I can find no treatment…As one old fellow once said, Randy, the wicked have no rest.
I am writeing this to you guys to let you know there is a great possability that the something has set our choices apart by the phenomena of time, both future, past and present time…If this is what Eternal Life is about and not some new Technology that some agency is studying by useing people as guaini pigs, then the answers we are looking for concern the mirroring of time in both our physical,mental and spiritual demeanor…when times choice supercedes our choices then help in the area of time is essential to our wellbeing and healing…even now I heard a voice from the past laughing at what I am writieing to you as perhaps someone is silently weeping..
Has anyone brought up the idea of what this is that is effecting us to be time or eternal? if so let me know
When I was studying an English course in university. I was fascinated by the term “voice” in the context of analyzing literature. According to Oxford: Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms, a voice is “a rather metaphorical term by which some critics refer to some distinctive features of written work in terms of spoken utterance. The voice of a literary work is then the specific group of characteristics displayed by the *narrator or poetic ‘speaker’ (or in some uses, the actual author behind them), assessed in terms of *tone, *style or personality. Distinctions between various kinds of narrative voice in terms of how they address the reader (rather than in therms of their perception of events, as in the distinctive concept of *point of view). Likewise in a non-narrative poems, distinctions can be made between the personal voice of a private lyric and assumed voice (the *persona) of a dramatic monologue”.
Many years ago, after I analyzed the meaning of the term voice, I thought to myself the “voices” I “hear” have personalities, pitch, tone, timbre, and a message.
But the voices are most often said to be internal and not external forces.
Stopping the term “hearing voices” will not necessarily make the “sound” go away. Perhaps we can find a more empowering phrase for this phenomena.
But then again, maybe providing information on what is hearing voices and what it is like for many of us is powerful enough because we find a vocabulary that is not destructive to our well being; and also because it gives us a sense that we are not alone going through this experience.