Despite the recent proliferation of scientific, clinical, and narrative accounts of auditory verbal hallucinations, the phenomenology of voice hearing remains opaque and undertheorized. In this article, we outline an interdisciplinary approach to understanding hallucinatory experiences which seeks to demonstrate the value of the humanities and social sciences to advancing knowledge in clinical research and practice. We argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH utilizes rigorous and context-appropriate methodologies to analyze a wider range of first-person accounts of AVH (...) at 3 contextual levels: cultural, social, and historical; experiential; and biographical. We go on to show that there are significant potential benefits for voice hearers, clinicians, and researchers. These include informing the development and refinement of subtypes of hallucinations within and across diagnostic categories; “front-loading” research in cognitive neuroscience; and suggesting new possibilities for therapeutic intervention. In conclusion, we argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH can nourish the ethical core of scientific enquiry by challenging its interpretive paradigms, and offer voice hearers richer, potentially more empowering ways to make sense of their experiences. (shrink)

When invited to edit a special issue of Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology on the theme ‘critical underpinnings of user/survivor research and co-production,’ our initial goal was to foreground explicit discussions of the philosophical and critical theory claims that undergird intellectual and political interventions into research and knowledge production led by, involving, or, in one way or another, ‘featuring’ the work of mental health service users and survivors. From our specific locations and backgrounds, we were aware of, engaged with and contributed (...) to... (shrink)

For at least some of us, Chapman’s Critique of Critical Psychiatry represents an in fact long overdue articulation of the moral and ethical risks (and in harm) of the Szaszian legacy in critical psychiatry. Namely, a binary framework that bluntly differentiates “somatic” from “psychological” (or, for some, socially manufactured) conditions. Chapman articulates these risks in important ways—unpacking, for example, implications vis-à-vis broader disability groups, identities tied to neurodiversity, and the transgender community, among others.Implied, but less explicitly stated, are the ways (...) in which an objectivist, Szazsian politics plays out even within and among (psychiatric) service user/survivor activists, namely... Read More. (shrink)