What do you think?
Rate this book
Voices of Reason, Voices of Insanity
Records of people experiencing verbal hallucinations or 'hearing voices' can be found throughout history. Voices of Reason, Voices of Insanity examines almost 2,800 years of these reports including Socrates, Schreber and Pierre Janet's "Marcelle", to provide a clear understanding of the experience and how it may have changed over the millenia. Through six cases of historical and contemporary voice hearers, Leudar and Thomas demonstrate how the experience has metamorphosed from being a sign of virtue to a sign of insanity, signalling such illnesses as schizophrenia or dissociation.
They argue that the experience is interpreted by the voice hearer according to social categories conveyed through language, and is therefore best studied as a matter of language use. Controversially, they conclude that 'hearing voices' is an ordinary human experience which is unfortunately either mystified or pathologised.
Voices of Reason, Voices of Insanity offers a fresh perspective on this enigmatic experience and will be of interest to students, researchers and clinicians alike.
They argue that the experience is interpreted by the voice hearer according to social categories conveyed through language, and is therefore best studied as a matter of language use. Controversially, they conclude that 'hearing voices' is an ordinary human experience which is unfortunately either mystified or pathologised.
Voices of Reason, Voices of Insanity offers a fresh perspective on this enigmatic experience and will be of interest to students, researchers and clinicians alike.
- GenresPsychologyScience
240 pages, Paperback
First published April 6, 2000
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 5, 2018
A complex work exploring the meaning of hearing voices from several perspectives, demonstrating the contingent and stable properties of verbal hallucinations.
Leudar includes ancient and more recent historical reports of hallucinations (Socrates and Schreber), literary analysis (the relationship between greek heroes and the gods in the Iliad), philosophical perspectives from James and Mead, the representation of schizophrenics who hear voices in the media, and the reports of schizophrenic people themselves on their experiences. Leudar thereby demonstrates that the meaning of hearing voices has not always been concomitant with insanity, or considered to be strictly an internal, meaningless phenomenon, as it is today by mainstream psychology.
This is a very interdisciplinary book, which is one of its key strengths; however, this combined with the author's deliberate "atheoretical" approach makes it feel less coherent and powerful than it could. In his academic work, Leudar is forthright and has clear theoretical arguments. His perspective in this book is not uninformed by these, but he is instead less ready to draw conclusions, and prefers to present the work more or less unvarnished. This said, the "raw" material here is tinder for further work down the line, and the diversity of the work makes it accessible to a wide array of academic areas, while connecting those areas themselves to other subjects, as good interdisciplinary work should do. This will make some areas of the book less digestible than others, but I reccomend sticking with it nevertheless if you are interested in mental illness generally, hallucinations specifically, and have a background in psychology, sociology, psychiatry, literature, media criticism, or critical theory.
Leudar includes ancient and more recent historical reports of hallucinations (Socrates and Schreber), literary analysis (the relationship between greek heroes and the gods in the Iliad), philosophical perspectives from James and Mead, the representation of schizophrenics who hear voices in the media, and the reports of schizophrenic people themselves on their experiences. Leudar thereby demonstrates that the meaning of hearing voices has not always been concomitant with insanity, or considered to be strictly an internal, meaningless phenomenon, as it is today by mainstream psychology.
This is a very interdisciplinary book, which is one of its key strengths; however, this combined with the author's deliberate "atheoretical" approach makes it feel less coherent and powerful than it could. In his academic work, Leudar is forthright and has clear theoretical arguments. His perspective in this book is not uninformed by these, but he is instead less ready to draw conclusions, and prefers to present the work more or less unvarnished. This said, the "raw" material here is tinder for further work down the line, and the diversity of the work makes it accessible to a wide array of academic areas, while connecting those areas themselves to other subjects, as good interdisciplinary work should do. This will make some areas of the book less digestible than others, but I reccomend sticking with it nevertheless if you are interested in mental illness generally, hallucinations specifically, and have a background in psychology, sociology, psychiatry, literature, media criticism, or critical theory.
Displaying 1 of 1 review