Person-ness of voices in lived experience accounts of psychosis: combining literary linguistics and clinical psychology

Summary

This paper draws on literary linguistics to analyze how people who hear voices perceive those voices as social agents with varying degrees of person-ness. It introduces a scalar Characterization Model of Voices, which is more nuanced than existing clinical psychology approaches. By applying the model to two interview accounts from voice-hearers in a psychosis intervention, the authors show that voices can be understood as similar to fictional characters, offering new insights into the phenomenology of voice-hearing and potential implications for therapy.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In this paper, we use concepts and insights from the literary linguistic study of story-world characters to shed new light on the nature of voices as social agents in the context of lived experience accounts of voice-hearing. We demonstrate a considerable overlap between approaches to voices as social agents in clinical psychology and the perception of characters in the linguistic study of fiction, but argue that the literary linguistic approach facilitates a much more nuanced account of the different degrees of person-ness voices might be perceived to possess. We propose a scalar Characterisation Model of Voices and demonstrate its explanatory potential by comparing two lived experience descriptions of voices in interviews with voice-hearers in a psychosis intervention. The new insights into the phenomenology of voice-hearing achieved by applying the model are relevant to the understanding of voice-hearing as well as to therapeutic interventions.

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