Thinking Allowed: Hearing Voices

The Radio 4 programme, Thinking Allowed, linked on the Intervoicewebsite, looked at new sociological research on hearing voices. Theprogramme started off with an extract from Woman's Hour, of a womanwho heard the negative voice of her stepfather, who died when she was three.

Julie Arthur-Kirby was the guest speaker on the ThinkingAllowed programme, and senior lecturer, in the department of socialand psychological science, at Edgehill University, and author of apaper called Natural Body, Social Mind,: An Experience of VoiceHearing. I thought it was an excellent programme, which said many things whichI had discovered from my own experiences, observations, and findings,and had written about in my articles. I agree with the speaker, JulieKirby, that people in supportive social environments, experience supportive voices, whereas people in disruptive or unsupportive environments, experience disruptive and unsupportive voices. I now live in a supportive environment, and I hear positive and supportive female voices (mostly when and where I want to hear them), but if mycircumstances ever changed for the worse, or a bad or negative event triggered me, it could very easily bring the negative and intrusive voices back.

It was also mentioned in the programme, that the negative voices canchange to positive voices, if the person's social circumstances changed, and as they meet new people, and then the voices take upon the characteristic of those new people. This has been very true for me, as I have internalised the positive and supportive voices, of female psychotherapists, I have had therapeutic relationships with in the past, and who were both very good to me.

I'm glad it was mentioned in the programme, that voices can be caused by or due to over-socialisation. This often occurs, when psychiatric-diagnosed people, are forced to socialise against our consent or will, and when our privacy is violated and invaded. Social interaction is very important, but it's also important that it isn't forced upon us, and that our privacy is also safeguarded, respected,and protected.