Sometimes the voice sounds like normal speech, and sometimes it’s a torrent of idea fragments and half-formed thoughts. In his book Chatter, the University of Michigan psychologist Ethan Kross reports on one study suggesting that we talk to ourselves at a rate equivalent to speaking four thousand words a minute out loud. About a quarter of all people hear the sounds of other people’s voices in their heads. About half of all people address themselves in the second person as “you” often or all the time. Some people use their own name when talking to themselves. By the way, the people who address
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