Inner voices
A series that examines the medical, spiritual and literary aspects of hearing voices
The strange world of felt presences
What links polar explorer Ernest Shackleton, sleep paralysis, and hearing voices?
Accents, narrators and total silence: how you hear voices when you read
Do characters speak to you when you read – or are you more affected by the author’s voice? In response to a survey investigating what hearing voices means to writers, we asked readers for their experiences. Here are some of your responses
Talking to the voices in our heads
Sam Wilkinson and Felicity Deamer: A promising approach to treating people who hear voices, also known as ‘auditory hallucinations’, is to get the patient or therapist to interact with the speaker
How do writers find their voices?
Survey of Edinburgh books festival authors reveals that 'hearing a character' means different things over course of a writing career
Hearing voices allowed Charles Dickens to create extraordinary fictional worlds
Hearing the human voice was central to the Victorian novelist's technique. He claimed that he did not invent, but merely wrote down what he heard and imagined
Hilary Mantel and Virginia Woolf on the sounds in writers' minds
Talking to ourselves: the science of the little voice in your head
Samuel Beckett's articulation of unceasing inner speech
Marco Bernini: The literal sounds in his characters' minds express a subtle and revealing understanding of how we all talk to ourselves
Do you hear voices? You are not alone
Ben Alderson-Day: Auditory verbal hallucinations or ‘hearing voices’ is not restricted to people who have a form of psychosis. For many, the voices provide support and guidance or have a spiritual aspect
Hearing voices: what’s your experience when reading?
Researchers investigate what it means to 'hear voices'
