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The voices not only speak to the patient, but they pass electricity through the body,
beat him, paralyse him, take his thoughts away. They are often hypostasized as
people, or in other very bizarre ways. For example, a patient claims that a “voice”
is perched above each of his ears. One voice is a little larger than the other but both
are about the size of a walnut, and they consist of nothing but a large ugly mouth.
Threats or curses form the main and most common content of the “voices.” Day
and night they come from everywhere, from the walls, from above and below, from
the cellar and the roof, from heaven and from hell, from near and far.… When the
patient is eating, he hears a voice saying, “Each mouthful is stolen.” If he drops
something, he hears, “If only your foot had been chopped off.”
The voices are often very contradictory. At one time they may be against the
patient … then they may contradict themselves.… The roles of pro and con are
often taken over by voices of dierent people.… The voice of a daughter tells a
patient: “He is going to be burned alive,” while his mother’s voice says, “He will
not be burned.” Besides their persecutors the patients often hear the voice of some
protector.
The voices are often localized in the body.… A polyp may be the occasion for
localizing the voices in the nose. An intestinal disturbance brings them into
connection with the abdomen.… In cases of sexual complexes, the penis, the urine
in the bladder, or the nose utter obscene words.… A really or imaginarily gravid
patient will hear her child or children speaking inside her womb.…
Inanimate objects may speak. The lemonade speaks, the patient’s name is heard
to be coming from a glass of milk. The furniture speaks to him.
Bleuler wrote, “Almost every schizophrenic who is hospitalized hears ‘voices.’ ” But he
emphasized that the reverse did not hold—that hearing voices did not necessarily denote
schizophrenia. In the popular imagination, though, hallucinatory voices are almost
synonymous with schizophrenia—a great misconception, for most people who do hear
voices are not schizophrenic.
M
any people report hearing voices which are not particularly directed at them, as
Nancy C. wrote:
I hallucinate conversations on a regular basis, often as I am falling asleep at night.
It seems to me that these conversations are real and are actually taking place
between real people, at the very time I’m hearing them, but are occurring
somewhere else. I hear couples arguing, all kinds of things. They are not voices I
can identify, they are not people I know. I feel like I’m a radio, tuned into someone
else’s world. (Though always an American-English-speaking world.) I can’t think of
any way to regard these experiences except as hallucinations. I am never a
participant; I am never addressed. I am just listening in.