Making Sense of Hearing Voices

This magnificent book brings together in one volume all thetheory, learning, research, wisdom from practice and practical examples of therevolutionary work of Marius Romme, Sandra Escher and Dirk Corstens intosupporting people who hear voices. Challenging the fundamental premises ofmainstream psychiatry, Romme, Escher and Corstens have pioneered their approachof 'making sense of voices' since the 1980s. They were the first to listen toand talk with the voices of voice hearers, and to realise that the identitiesof the voices and what they had to say held huge meaning in the contexts ofvoice hearers' lives. These were not hallucinations or delusions but phenomenawhose words offered clues both to the person's history (frequently of childhoodabuse and severe trauma) and how they might be helped to learn to live withtheir voices and recover. For far too many people, the blunt interventionspreferred by mainstream psychiatry - incarceration in psychiatric institutions,loss of independence and long-term reliance on welfare and heavy doses ofneuroleptics and tranquillisers - had in fact robbed them of the mental andemotional capacity and external resources they needed to help themselves. This book explains the history and reports the wealth of researchconducted to support this way of working, together with detailed practicaladvice on how to use the approach with voice hearers. Drawing on the accountsof numerous voice hearers, in addition to the clinical research, this book isthe go-to resource for those who hear voices, the people who love and supportthem and those whose work brings them into contact with voice hearers and whowish to help them find ways to negotiate a positive relationship with theirsometimes unwelcome and vociferous companions. Unlikemedication, this approach works, has no distressing side effects, and canenable the person to co-exist with the voices that they find helpful, whileothers that could be hostile and even seemingly evil, can be managed or even goaway. Once heeded, their messages, which could often be attempts to protect thevoice hearer, were no longer needed.