Voice-hearing experiences associated with psychosis are highly varied, frequently distressing, poorly understood, and deeply stigmatised, even within mental health settings. Voices in Psychosis responds to the urgent need for new ways of listening to and making sense of these experiences. It brings multiple disciplinary, clinical, and experiential perspectives to bear on an original and extraordinarily rich body of testimony: transcripts of forty in-depth phenomenological interviews conducted with people who hear voices and who have accessed Early Intervention in Psychosis services. The book addresses the social, clinical, and research contexts in which the interviews took place, thoroughly investigating the embodied, multisensory, affective, linguistic, spatial, and relational qualities of voice-hearing experiences. The nature, politics, and consequences of these analytic endeavours is a focus of critical reflection throughout. Each chapter gives a multifaceted insight into the experiences of voice-hearers in the North East of England and to their wider resonance in contexts ranging from medieval mysticism to Amazonian shamanism, from the nineteenth-century novel to the twenty-first century survivor movement. By deepening and extending our understanding of hearing voices in psychosis in a striking way, the book will be an invaluable resource not only for academics in the field, but for mental health practitioners and members of the voice-hearing community. An open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence.

About the Author
Angela Woods is Professor of Medical Humanities and acting Director of Institute for Medical Humanities at Durham University. She works at the intersections of cultural theory, psychology, philosophy and literary studies, focusing on psychosis, narrative and the dynamics of interdisciplinary collaboration. From 2012-2022 she was Co-Director of Hearing the Voice, a large, interdisciplinary research project funded by the Wellcome Trust. Ben Alderson-Day is a research psychologist specialising in atypical development and mental health. Since completing a PhD on autism and problem-solving (University of Edinburgh, 2012), he has been based at Durham University as part of Hearing the Voice, a 10-year interdisciplinary project on the experience of voice-hearing (or auditory verbal hallucinations). His research combines phenomenological, cognitive, and neuroscientific methods, and has included topics as diverse as psychosis, reading, imagination, spirituality, sleep, and phobia. Charles Fernyhough is a psychologist and writer. The focus of his recent scientific work has been in applying ideas from mainstream developmental psychology to the study of psychosis, particularly the phenomenon of voice-hearing. He is PI and Director of the interdisciplinary Hearing the Voice project, supported by the Wellcome Trust.

Reviews
The book will be of immense interest to mental health practitioners who face the challenges of therapeutic work with persons who hear voices. Of particular interest is the final section: four essays address the thorny question of what hearing voices can reveal about the human mind and the way it processes hallucination. In sum, the 28 essays will appeal to an audience beyond the walls of academe that will certainly include clinicians, mental health activists, and survivors. * Choice *



Book Information
ISBN 9780192898388
Author Angela Woods
Format Hardback
Page Count 272
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 656g
Dimensions(mm) 253mm * 178mm * 20mm