Idea Post #11: Auditory Hallucinations

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Auditory Hallucinations or more commonly known as "hearing voices" is a false perception of hearing sounds. A person can hallucinate that they are hearing voices in their head or music. Auditory hallucinations are not just for people that are completely psychotic, many people experience auditory hallucinations in their life time. People who do experience sounds that are not occurring aren't necessarily psychotic for different reasons.Most people who experience unaided sounds are able to tell that the sound isn't really happening, the voice is generally more positive and the person has more control over hearing it or not. People that experience these sounds and have a level of psychosis differ because of the frequency of the hallucination, the voices have a greater linguistic complexity and there is a greater emotional response from the person. There is a larger difference between hearing someone's voice a few times and actually believing in the hallucination.
My work is not about auditory hallucinations. After doing some research on the topic I was surprised to learn that auditory hallucinations are more common amongst people even those who are not psychotic. So this made me think about a negative script, or a voice of yourself always talking to yourself. I've always wondered how strange it was that I thought to myself as if I was having a conversation with myself. I think many people experience life like this. We hear ourselves talk to ourselves. I just feel that sometimes my own voice is just too harsh.

"Auditory hallucinations have veridical perceptual qualities in the sense that individuals are often convinced of the objective reality of the experience. In most cases, auditory hallucinations are unintentional, intrusive, and unwanted. Affected individuals may or may not have insight into the hallucinations. A person with insight will acknowledge that the experience is abnormal and will report less interference with daily activities than a person with no insight."
- Waters


Waters, Flavie. "Auditory Hallucinations in Psychiatric Illness." PsychiatricTimes 27.03 (2010). UBM Medica LLC. UBM Medica LLC, 10 Mar. 2010. Web. 7 Dec. 2010. http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/cme/display/article/10168/1534546.