Voices in Psychosis deepens and extends the understanding of hearing voices in psychosis in a striking way. For the first time, this collection brings multiple disciplinary, clinical and experiential perspectives to bear on an original and extraordinarily rich body of testimony.

Part One: Orientations 1: Angela Woods, Ben Alderson-Day, Charles Fernyhough: Voices in Psychosis: Interdisciplinary Listening 2: Guy Dodgson, Stephanie Common, Peter Moseley, Rebecca Lee, Ben Alderson-Day: Voices in Context: What Do Early Intervention in Psychosis Services Offer? 3: 'Isaac' (Pseudonym): Reflecting on Voices Part Two: The Experience of Hearing Voices 4: Gillian Allnutt: The Quickening 5: Ben Alderson-Day, Thomas Ward: The Sound of Fear 6: Åsa Jansson: Affect and Voice-Hearing: Past and Present 7: Jamie Moffatt: Bodily Sensations During Voice-Hearing Experiences: A Role for Interoception? 8: Peter Moseley, Kaja Mitrenga: The Varieties and Complexities of Multimodal Hallucinations in Psychosis 9: John Foxwell: Lost Agency and the Sense of Control 10: Adam J. Powell: Pollution and Purity: Understanding Voices as Punishment for Un-Wholly Sins Part Three: Approaching Experience 11: Hilary Powell: Voices in Psychosis: A Medieval Perspective 12: Tehseen Noorani: Conspiration in the Archive: Sense-Making and the Research Interview Methodology 13: Marco Bernini: Reading for Departure: Narrative Theory and Phenomenological Interviews on Hallucinations 14: Angela Woods: Relating to Leah's Voices Part Four: Locating Voices in Language 15: Sam Wilkinson, Joel Krueger: The Phenomenology of Voice-Hearing and Two Concepts of Voice 16: Felicity Deamer: Bridging the Gap in Common Ground When Talking about Voices 17: Elena Semino, Luke Collins, Zsófia Demjén: Silences in First-Person Accounts of Voice-Hearing: A Linguistic Approach Part Five: Spatial and Relational Dimensions 18: Peter Garratt: Household Ghosts and Personified Presences 19: Mary Coaten: Voice-Hearing and Lived Space 20: Patricia Waugh: Vagabond Narratives: To Be Without a Home 21: Christopher C.H. Cook: Leah's Voices: Reflections on Auditory Verbal Hallucinations as Spiritual and Religious Experience 22: Anna Luce, Nicola Barclay: 'I just feel like there's just lots of people in my head!' Reciprocal Roles and Voice-Hearing 23: David Dupuis: Learning to Navigate Hallucinations: Comparing Voice Control Ability During Psychosis and in Ritual Use of Psychedelics 24: Akiko Hart: Then I open the door and walk into their world': Crossing the Threshold and Hearing the Voice Part Six: Voice-Hearing and Mental Processes 25: Charles Fernyhough: Remembering Voices 26: Colleen Rollins, Jane Garrison: Voices and Reality Monitoring: How Do We Know What Is Real? 27: Corinne Saunders: Supernatural Presences: Medieval and Modern Narratives of Voice-Hearing 28: David Napthine: Maelstrom

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.

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.

An original, in-depth study of hearing voices in psychosis Radically interdisciplinary, featuring contributions from researchers in anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, history, literary studies, linguistics, medical humanities, philosophy, psychology, theology and religious studies; experts by experience, clinicians, activists, and writers Contributors are all members or close associates of Hearing the Voice (2012-2022), the world's largest interdisciplinary study of voice-hearing Highly focused with all chapters focussing on the same set of interviews An open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence