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“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
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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 

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