Varieties of Voice-Hearing: Psychics and the Psychosis Continuum

Abstract

Hearing voices that are not present is a prominent symptom of serious mental illness. However, these experiences may be common in the non-help-seeking population, leading some to propose the existence of a continuum of psychosis from health to disease. Thus far, research on this continuum has focused on what is impaired in help-seeking groups. Here we focus on protective factors in non-help-seeking voice-hearers. We introduce a new study population: clairaudient psychics who receive daily auditory messages. We conducted phenomenological interviews with these subjects, as well as with patients diagnosed with a psychotic disorder who hear voices, people with a diagnosis of a psychotic disorder who do not hear voices, and matched control subjects (without voices or a diagnosis). We found the hallucinatory experiences of psychic voice-hearers to be very similar to those of patients who were diagnosed. We employed techniques from forensic psychiatry to conclude that the psychics were not malingering. Critically, we found that this sample of nonhelp-seeking voice hearers were able to control the onset and offset of their voices, that they were less distressed by their voice-hearing experiences and that, the first time they admitted to voice-hearing, the reception by others was much more likely to be positive. Patients had much more negative voice-hearing experiences, were more likely to receive a negative reaction when sharing their voices with others for the first time, and this was subsequently more disruptive to their social relationships. We predict that this sub-population of healthy voice-hearers may have much to teach us about the neurobiology, cognitive psychology and ultimately the treatment of voices that are distressing.

Does hallucination perceptual modality impact psychosis risk?

“…Methodological concerns aside, AVH are known to occur in multiple disorders, including post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) , borderline personality disorder (BPD), and temporal lobe epilepsy and have even been reported in non‐treatment‐seeking populations . How to distinguish hallucinations that confer risk for psychosis from those that do not?…”

“…How to distinguish hallucinations that confer risk for psychosis from those that do not? Given evidence that basic phenomenology , neural systems , and computational and perceptual underpinnings of hallucinations may be shared among those with hallucinations with and without a need for care, or between hallucinations and experiences deemed “pseudohallucinations” , the question of which further factors predispose to distress and dysfunction remains a critical one.…”

Paracingulate sulcus morphology and hallucinations in clinical and non-clinical groups

“…19, 2018; suggests that decisions are made as to the source of a percept through comparison of its contextual, semantic, perceptual or cognitive features with characteristic traces relating to internal or external sources 57 . However, current computational theories of hallucinations provide evidence inconsistent with the idea of a fixed percept, proposing instead a top-down driven process combining sensory information within a framework consisting of variable levels of beliefs and prior experience 58,59 . It can be argued that these are not mutually exclusive processes -while the features of a percept may be generated through a process involving non-parametric cluster-wise correction for multiple comparisons using Monte Carlo simulation.…”

Ouvidores de vozes: uma revisão sobre o sentido e a relação com as vozes

“…As explained earlier, the way each person deals with the experience of hearing voices and with his/her own recovery is closely related to his/her life history. This is again evidenced by Powers III, Kelley, and Corlett (2017), who show, through a comparison between the hearers who seek help and those who do not need it, that the characteristics of their voices were similar -that is, level of loudness, content and frequency -, but the context of life, the meaning attributed to the voices, and the relationship established with them, were different. An important difference between both was how someone else received information about hearing voices when the hearer first talked about his/her experience.…”

“…An important difference between both was how someone else received information about hearing voices when the hearer first talked about his/her experience. Hearers who did not need help had more positive receptions upon the news; they felt less distressed by the experience and were able to control beginning and end of hearing voices throughout the day; those who needed help had predominantly negative receptions when reporting their experience for the first time, and this was subsequently more harmful to the establishment of social relationships (Powers III et al, 2017).…”