Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T00:25:10.453Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Inner Voices”

Phenomenological and Clinical Aspects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

G. Sedman
G. Sedman*
Affiliation:
Whiteley Wood Clinic, Woofinden Road, Sheffield 10
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The experience of hearing a “voice” or “loud thoughts” within the head or some other part of the body is not infrequently reported by psychiatric patients. Schneider (1959) has stipulated that “certain modes of hearing voices are of special diagnostic importance for assuming a schizophrenia: hearing one's own thoughts (or thoughts being audible), voices conversing with one another, and voices that keep up a running commentary on the patient's behaviour”. This paper is primarily concerned with the phenomena of “loud” or “audible” thoughts, “inner voices” and similar experiences. It attempts to show that various phenomena superficially resemble the schizophrenic experience of “thoughts becoming audible”, but that distinction is possible on phenomenological grounds.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 112 , Issue 486 , May 1966 , pp. 485 - 490
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1966 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baillarger, M. J. (1846). “Des hallucinations, des causes qui les produisent et des maladies qu'elles caractérisent.” Mem. l'Acad. Roy. de Méd., 12, 273–475.Google Scholar
Baillarger, M. J. (1846). “De l'influence de l'état intermédiaire à la veille at au sommeil sur la production et la marche des hallucinations.” Ibid., 12, 476–516.Google Scholar
Bleuler, E. (1911). Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias (trans. Zinkin, , 1951; New York: Int. University Press.)Google Scholar
Gadelius, B. (1896). Om tvangstankar, Stockholm (quoted by Skoog, G. (1959)) in “The anancastic syndrome and its relation to personality attitudes”. Acta psychiat. neurol. scand., Suppl. 134.Google Scholar
Gould, L. N. (1949). “Auditory hallucinations and subvocal speech.” J. nerv. ment. Dis., 109, 418–427.Google Scholar
Jaspers, K. (1911). “Die Trugwahrnehmungen.” Z. Neurol, u. Psychiat., 4, 289–305.Google Scholar
Jaspers, K. (1913–46). General Psychopathology (trans. 1962 by Hoenig, J., and Hamilton, M. W., pp. 69–74. Manchester: University Press).Google Scholar
Kandinsky, V. (1885). Kritische und Klinische Betrachtungen im Gebiete der Sinnestäuschungen. Berlin: Friedlander.Google Scholar
Lugaro, E. (1903). “Sulle pseudo-allucinazioni (allucinazioni psichiche di Baillarger) i contributo alla psicologia della demenza paranoide.” Riv. patol. nerve. Firenze, 8, 1–72.Google Scholar
Probst, M. (1903). “Über das Gedankenlautwerden und über Halluzinationen ohne Wahnideen.” Mschr. Psychiat. Neurol., 13, 401–423.Google Scholar
Schneider, K. (1959). Clinical Psychopathology (trans. Hamilton, M. W.). New York: Grune & Stratton.Google Scholar
Sedman, G. (1966). “A comparative study of pseudohallucinations, imagery and true hallucinations.” Brit. J. Psychiat., 112, 9.Google Scholar
Sedman, G. and Hopkinson, G. “The psychopathology of mystical and religious conversion experiences in psychiatric patients—a phenomenological study.” Confin. Psychiat. (Basel). (In press.)Google Scholar
Séglas, J. (1892). “Sur les hallucinations et en particulier les hallucinations verbales psychomotrices dans la mélancolie.” Arch, de Neurol., 23, 200–17 and 386–94. “Sur les phénomènes dits hallucinations psychiques” Ibid., 2nd series, 10, 395–7.Google Scholar
Stengel, E. (1944). “A study on some clinical aspects of the relationship between obsessional neurosis and psychotic reaction types.” J. ment. Sci., 40, 166–87.Google Scholar
Tamburini, A. (1889). “Sulle allucinazioni motorie.” Riv. sper. Freniat., 15, 444–64.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.