![]() Taken together, hallucinations and mental imagery (inner quasi-perceptions) constitute “superperceptions.” ![]() I also suggest that to understand hallucinations, a new terminology is required and that mental imagery, though in some respects quite different from hallucinations, is essentially hallucinatory and the successor to what Jaynes termed bicameral mentality. I conclude by noting how some therapists acknowledge that hallucinations are not inherently pathopsychological, and that “voice-hearers” should be encouraged to confront their voices as aspects of their selves. I integrate what we do know about the basics of the neurology of language, the adaptive advantages of the asymmetrical dual brain, and right-side brain activity and hallucinations. I describe hallucinations as produced by “aptic structures” or evolved, innate neurological networks plus the results of experience that afford certain aptitudes (Jaynes 1976). Next I comment on the failure to explain hallucinations and how a root cause is too often confused with accompanying conditions. What does the saliency of hallucinations among the general, non-clinical population indicate? Are hallucinations a matter of loose wires or vestigial neurostructures that under the right conditions are reactivated? To answer these questions, I first define hallucinations, distinguishing them from pseudohallucinations and illusions. IRVs may be a useful model for studying AVHs in the non-clinical population and need further investigation. IRVs may provide evidence for individual variation in imagery vividness and support for inner speech accounts of AVHs. Both controllable and uncontrollable IRVs were reported. Some individuals reported that IRVs were continuous with audible thoughts. IRVs were sometimes identified as the readers’ own voices, and sometimes as the voices of other people. Results indicated that many individuals report routinely experiencing IRVs, which often have the auditory qualities of overt speech, such as recognizable identity, gender, pitch, loudness and emotional tone. One hundred and sixty posts from a popular question and answer community website were analyzed using a qualitative content analysis approach, to examine the phenomenology of inner reading voices (IRVs). Inner speech is theorized to be the basis for auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs), but few empirical studies have examined the phenomenology of inner speech, particularly while reading. In other words, we believe that, while voices may occur in the context of a psychotic disorder, they should not be considered a psychotic symptom. On this and other bases outlined below, we argue that hearing voices should be considered a dissociative experience, which under some conditions may have pathological consequences. Voices heard by persons diagnosed schizophrenic appear to be indistinguishable, on the basis of their experienced characteristics, from voices heard by persons with dissociative disorders or with no mental disorder at all. While it is generally believed that such characteristics of voices have significant clinical implications, and are important in the differential diagnosis between dissociative and psychotic disorders, there is no research evidence in support of this. There is an entrenched clinical belief that distinctions can be made between these groups, typically on the basis of the perceived location or the ‘third-person’ perspective of the voices. While auditory hallucinations are considered a core psychotic symptom, central to the diagnosis of schizophrenia, it has long been recognized that persons who are not psychotic may also hear voices.
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