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When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

theguardian.com

31–40 of 72 posts

Re: When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

#31

Book: "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)#Brea... Theory: The brain has two hemispheres: One does the talking and one does the listening. Sometimes we react because the "self" is the last to know or just reacts not realizing it is a self evaluation below our awareness. (Dog goes to bite your hand and you react.) We then try to…

Are there any more recent works that develop on this idea with new research and historical analysis, or is this 40-year old book still the best there is?

Re: When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

#33
post #31

Book: "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)#Brea... Theory: The brain has two hemispheres: One does the talking and one does the listening. Sometimes we react because the "self" is the last to know or just reacts not realizing it is a self evaluation below our awareness. (Dog goes to bite your hand and you react.) We then try to…

Are there any more recent works that develop on this idea with new research and historical analysis, or is this 40-year old book still the best there is?

"The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: a critical reappraisal of Julian Jaynes’ hypothesis" (2006)

http://www.functionalneurology.com/materiale_cic/224_XXII_1/...

a Institute of Neurology, London, UK

b Department of Neurology, Amedeo Avogadro University, Novara, Italy

c Department of Classical Philology, University of Bologna, Italy

Reprint requests to: Dr Andrea Eugenio Cavanna Amedeo Avogadro University Corso Mazzini, 18 - 28100 Novara - Italy E-mail: acavanna@ion.ucl.ac.uk

Received: October 2006 Accepted for publication: January 2007

Re: When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

#34
post #30
post #3

I often have intense fantasies about conversations with personal mentors, historical figures and/or deities (what would Buddha say? How about Einstein? etc). Obviously I can't reproduce their thoughts, but knowing a little about them, I can try to think like them Surely they're not as visceral or reflexive as the author's voices. But I have always found value in empathizing with fantasized mentors, which has given me…

You're essentially creating what some people have taken to referring as "tulpas". http://www.meltingasphalt.com/neurons-gone-wild/

People in the corresponding reddit group claim they can see their tulpas and they have their own personality and will. It's a strange and fascinating place, that group.

Re: When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

#35
post #5

I have this thing where I wake up at 5:00 AM and my internal monologue sounds like someone twisting the tuning knob back and forth on a radio. Anyone know a name for that?

In Buddhist meditative practice terminology, it's known as the "monkey-mind" and the practice involves watching the "mind-stream" flow, from thought to sensation to feeling to thought...

Re: When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

#36
post #3

I often have intense fantasies about conversations with personal mentors, historical figures and/or deities (what would Buddha say? How about Einstein? etc). Obviously I can't reproduce their thoughts, but knowing a little about them, I can try to think like them Surely they're not as visceral or reflexive as the author's voices. But I have always found value in empathizing with fantasized mentors, which has given me…

I sometimes talk to myself or to hypothetical instances of other people I know. I try to do this quietly at times since I know it might not be perceived favorably by others. Mainly I do this to verbally externalize thoughts and force them back into my auditory memory (deliberately), hopefully reinforcing or bolstering a position I want to take or a course of action I need to take later. I hope I never lose track that…

> I try to do this quietly

If you hold a mobile phone to your ear, nobody will give you a second look.

Re: When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes talk to myself or to hypothetical instances of other people I know. I try to do this quietly at times since I know it might not be perceived favorably by others. Mainly I do this to verbally externalize thoughts and force them back into my auditory memory (deliberately), hopefully reinforcing or bolstering a position I want to take or a course of action I need to take later. I hope I never lose track that…

> I try to do this quietly If you hold a mobile phone to your ear, nobody will give you a second look.

Unless you get a real call while doing so.

Re: When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

#38
post #5

I have this thing where I wake up at 5:00 AM and my internal monologue sounds like someone twisting the tuning knob back and forth on a radio. Anyone know a name for that?

I don't know the name for this, but it sounds like something I sometimes encounter during a good float session in a sensory deprivation tank.

Re: When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

#39
Interesting article. Moreso for me as this is perhaps the one topic around here i have some first hand experience with.

That feeling is really really odd though. There's a moment when you go "wait, that's an apparently fully functioning consciousness that is capable of responding to my every thought, my brain/reality can DO THAT?". For me it took a long time to play off the many different possible solutions to that puzzle, and at the end of the day i settled for a mix of "currently unknown exactly how that is done" (sort of like consciousness itself, i guess) to "wow, reality sure does have some extra layers of "fun" i hadn't really been informed about.

If the voice(es) in any way confined themselves to the spectrum of being/knowledge that i as an individual acknowledged that i was in posession of, that would be one thing, but the world becomes a weird place when they go outside your acknowledged "knowns".

Now, i was lucky enough to have a very supportive and patient family that viewed it as something that could be managed outside of the realm of antipsychotic therapy. I'm not saying that handling it with prescribed drugs is necessarily a bad idea, if it works for you then i hope it continues to do so.

Sorry for the rant, but i was just reminded of how weird all of that stuff was to go through. Its been a while since i thought about it.

Re: When I stopped hearing the voices in my head

#40
post #29
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof, the times when it's one or more songs are the worst . I'd forgotten about that one.

But isn't that just called 'having a song stuck in your head?' I almost always have a song running in the background, never the same, but I wake up to a song and I go to sleep with a song.

Having a song stuck in your head is like having a working player stuck on repeat-1.

Sometimes "one or more songs" manifests not as one song at a time, but instead like a cacophony of players all stuck on repeat-1.

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