Featured Essays and First-Person Accounts

Personal narratives and reflective essays that center lived experience.

• What a Shaman Sees in A Mental Hospital (Waking Times)
  A first-person exploration comparing shamanic frameworks and psychiatric care—useful for readers interested in cross-cultural spiritual perspectives on altered states.

• Don’t Pity Me: Psychosis Gave Me Mad Skills
  A strengths-based account reframing psychosis as a source of creativity, insight, and resilience rather than only pathology.

• It’s important to listen to imaginary voices – just ask Virginia Woolf
  A literary-cultural take on voice hearing that draws on Woolf’s life and writing to argue for attention to inner voices as part of creative life.

• The voices you hear may be a driving power of your creativity
  An essay linking voice hearing with creative processes and artistic expression.

• Mad in America, Fighting for the Freedom to Hear Voices, Jeannie Bass
  A piece by Jeannie Bass advocating for autonomy, rights, and anti-stigma approaches for people who hear voices.

Research, Interviews, and Scholarly Perspectives

Interviews and studies that situate voice hearing in cultural, anthropological, and clinical contexts.

• How Culture Influences Voice Hearing: An Interview with Stanford Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann
  A readable interview discussing cross-cultural differences in the meaning, form, and prevalence of voice hearing.

• Study Examines Women’s Experiences of Hearing Voices
  A research summary focused on gendered aspects of voice hearing, reporting patterns, themes, and clinical implications.

• False Arguments, Part 3: Why Do People Hear Voices? (And Why Do We Need to Know?)
  A critical examination of prevailing theories about voice hearing and a call for nuanced, evidence-informed understanding.

Self-Help and Practice-Oriented Resources

Guides and practical approaches for dialoguing with voices and supporting people who hear them.

• Guía de autoayuda para hablar con las voces. Ideas para personas que oyen voces y quieren dialogar con ellas; de Rufus May y Elisabeth Svanholmer
  A Spanish-language self-help guide offering practical techniques for people who want to engage in dialogue with their voices.

• Unwanted unacceptable thoughts: most people have them and we should talk about them
  An accessible piece normalizing intrusive thoughts and providing steps for discussion and coping.

Community, Peer Support, and Lived-Knowledge

Resources highlighting collective knowledge, peer approaches, and community leadership.

• Hearing Voices: Let the Community Lead — The missing collective knowledge of those who hear voices is the greatest resource for the voice-hearing community.
  An argument for privileging peer knowledge and community-driven approaches in research, services, and advocacy.

• Intentional Peer Support Article: Defining Peer Support
  A primer on what peer support is—principles, goals, and how it differs from clinical help.

• Intentional Peer Support Article: What Makes Peer Support Unique?
  A companion piece describing the unique relational stance, mutuality, and practical value of peer support.

Clinical, Historical, and Theoretical Provocations

Challenging assumptions about psychosis and developmental models.

• All children are psychotic
  A provocative theoretical piece that frames certain developmental mental processes in language typically reserved for psychosis—useful for stimulating discussion about developmental psychopathology and metaphorical readings.