Hearing the voice

摘要

A voice that no one else can hear. A rift in reality, an utterance from nowhere. A glitch in the brain, a rogue bit of language-one that feels real, but that isn't really there; that is accepted as coming from the self, but at the same time feels utterly alien. A symptom of "dysconnectivity between prefrontal and temporal cortical regions". To give it its proper psychiatric label, it's an auditory verbal hallucination. If schizophrenia is, as in Thomas Szasz's coinage, the "sacred symbol of psychiatry", then this is the sacred symbol of the sacred symbol. If you hear voices, you're really mad. Let's imagine a young man-call him Mark-alone in his bedroom, having this disorienting experience for the first time. We can imagine him wondering whom to tell: his mum, his sister, his teacher, his family doctor. Perhaps his best friend, someone who probably knows as little about voice-hearing as Mark does. Mark ajso has to factor in their understanding of the experience.