‘Inner Voices’ is an ongoing series of blog posts and short articles on voice-hearing and related issues published online by The Guardian.
Written by Hearing the Voice researchers, the articles in the series explore the scientific, philosophical and literary aspects of hearing voices. Topics covered include the latest research into voice-hearing in people who do not have a psychiatric diagnosis, the neural mechanisms underlying ordinary inner speech and experiences of hearing voices, as well as the representation of voices and inner speech in literary works such as Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, Hilary Mantell’s Beyond Black and Samuel Beckett’s Ohio Impromptu, among other issues.
The series also contains the interim findings of the “Writers’ Inner Voices” project – a qualitative study of literary creativity, designed to explore the complex ways in which writers experience the voices, presence and agency of the characters and people they bring to life.
The ‘Inner Voices’ series is available in full here.
In order of publication, the Hearing the Voice posts are:
- Ben Alderson-Day, Do you hear voices? You are not alone
- Marco Bernini, Samuel Beckett’s articulation of unceasing inner speech
- Peter Moseley, Talking to ourselves: the science of the little voice in your head
- Patricia Waugh, Hilary Mantel and Virginia Woolf on the sounds in writers’ minds
- Peter Garratt, Hearing voices allowed Charles Dickens to create extraordinary fictional worlds
- Jennifer Hodgson, How do writers find their voices?
- Sam Wilkinson and Felicity Deamer, Talking to the Voices in our Heads
- Ben Alderson-Day and David Smailes, The Strange World of Felt Presences