|
|
TITLE: HEARING VOICES:
Contesting the Voice of Reason
|
|
|
TITLE: HEARING VOICES:
Contesting the Voice of Reason
|
| DESCRIPTION: The hearing of voices
is generally regarded as a pathological phenomenon, a form of mental illness.
This belief in the pathology of hearing voices underpins the diagnostic
systems of psychology and psychiatry and most forms of treatment. Hearing
Voices, however, would appear to be far more common than often believed.
Drawing on her research with the Hearing Voices Network the author reveals
how many voice hearers are not suffering from mental illness, and that
voice hearers who develop non-psychiatric explanations of their voices
may live with them quite well. The pathological consequences of voice
hearing are, to a large extent it seems, linked up with the social and
psychiatric reaction to the experience. Lisa Blackman has written an important
book that bears directly on some of the central assumptions of psychology
and psychiatry and questions our understanding of ourselves as rational
autonomous human beings.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lisa Blackman is Lecturer in the Psychology of Communications, Goldsmiths College, University of London.
|
