Peace, I did not answer the OP because I couldn’t. I’m not sure anyone can, the way it was posed.
I have a great deal of sympathy for schizophrenics. Contrary to your implications, this population has a much lower incidence of violent acts than the general population. In practice, they are often victims of horrible abuse, neglect and manipulation. Your comment about legal defence was, well, badly worded. I’m trying to be diplomatic here.
Psychiarists, in my view, still understand very little about the human mind. Despite the MD, or having a different focus from psychologists or neurologists, the understanding of the brain is still very primitive. We don’t know how the most successful psychiatric drugs work, except in general terms. This science will not be recognizable in twenty years.
Wait a minute. You don’t need to have a “deranged” mind to hear voices. Sometimes it happens when your mind is too tired and stressed, or you’re too drunk. And that doesn’t mean you’re nuts.
I’ve had audio hallucinations most of my life. To address a point raised above, the source is most often not a bona fide acoustic event; i.e., most often it is activity wholly contained within the nervous system and no real sound waves contribute. But, sometimes the audio hallucinations I’ve experienced can be triggered or accompanied by external stimuli. When sitting at my computer on a relatively peaceful Saturday afternoon the sound of the AC compressor chugging away outside my window can mutate into a chant or a rock song. A dripping faucet may remind me of the old newscasts that had the sound of teletypes in the background and some muffled news anchor-like voice sounds might seem to be there as well.
Those sorts of things are rarely intelligible speech, but I’ve had exactly the experience Uniball describes where, at a quiet time, I’ll hear my name as if somebody was in the room and said it. FWIW, I have tinnitus that waxes and wanes, but is sometimes quite pronounced (to the point that I sometimes think - no, I don’t really - that others in the room should be able to hear it if they got close enough to my ears).
Audio hallucinations experienced as commanding voices by the deranged have been mentioned as well. All I’ll say is 1) as noted, what I hear is usually not intelligible speech, 2) when I do “hear” these things I am quite aware that they are not real and 3) if I was to hear a voice telling me to, say, kill the postman I’d say “Bugger off Evil Voice, I like the postman, he brings me checks.”
Beatle, relax. You know, they ain’t “hallucinations”. Perhaps, they are called “illusions”.
Uniball, I didn’t use the term “nuts”, you did, whatever it means to you. If you are tired or stressed or drunk to the point of “hearing voices”, you mind is deranged. Do you hear them now?
Well, I have alaso heard voices talking to me and sometimes I hear sounds that are not really there. But I’m not psychotic, and if a voice told me someothing like “vote for your communist candidate” I would tell it to screw off :-)!!!
Also, I have this odd ability sometimes to seemingly imagine voices in my head then hear them with my own two ears… I have too concentrate to do this and it usually happens only right after I fall asleep.
Now this is just my personal opinion. I think if other people tried to actually imagine voices and concentrate on those voices then they could “hear” them also with their own ears. I think that God may be talking to may NAD I think he/she talks to US ALL by this way, just some listen and others don’t listen to God.
This is my first post ever to these message boards so I hope you like my signature… I have a real interest in Urban legends, and subsequently mocking them sometimes as well also GRIN
"The fact that they hear/heard voices is in indication of their
irrationality. It’s difficult to pin down what exactly the voices are or what their power is, but most
every psychiatrist will agree that someone hearing voices ordering them around is suffering from
serious mental illness. "
That’s boloney. I’d like to see a site. Im sure you won’t find one.
When I went to the psychiatrist about the voices that I hear, he was going to put me on meds… then he realized that the voices weren’t hallucinations, but that I actually do hear them in my head.
He was so baffled by this that he brought in another psychiatrist, and two hours later, when they had run out of ideas or questions they started joking around, “does it happen when there’s a full moon?”
Normally that wouldn’t have bothered me, but it was less than a year ago that the voices made me want to jump out of my car. And although I was crying hysterically, nobody took my seriously.
Uniball, use a dictionary (hard copy or on line) for word definitions. Movies are for entertainment only. Derange=insane, abnormal, etc.
A short note. We all may have occasional “illusions”, with all our senses. In the case of sonic “illusions”, this happens: “Honey, did you call me?”. NO (surprise).
In the OP it was clearly stated “psychotic patients”. Let’s keep answers within “psychotic patients”.
If anyone “hears voices”, especially if they are distinct, on regular basis, see your doctor.
Having done some psychiatry, I would suggest that hearing voices just on waking or falling asleep (hypnagogic and hypnapompic hallucinations) are not that worrisome, although they are seen in cataplexy.
Everybody misinterprets sound once in a while. Thinking someone calls your name once in a while is normal. If this happens very often and is bothersome, some people do benefit from very low doses of neuroleptics. I would not call these people deranged. I would not call a full blown schizophrenic deranged, either.
Having voices order you around… well it is not necessarily a sign of serious mental illness, especially if you have the insight to know the voices are not “real” (plausible). Schizophrenics do not have this insight. If they tell you to get out of your car (or else…) and you realize they are “fake”, there may be an underlying diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive traits. Psychosis itself is a spectrum. Depression can have psychotic features, people can have a single brief psychotic episode, people can have anic-depression greater than their psychosis (schizoaffective) or can be schizophrenic.
Huh? I’m not worried about anything. But it’s a weekend, so perhaps I’ll just relax for the fun of it. Anyway, the perceptions to which I referred most definitely qualify as hallucinations.
"He was so baffled by this that he brought in another psychiatrist, and two hours later, when they
had run out of ideas or questions they started joking around, “does it happen when there’s a full
moon?”
Psychiatrists are often more nuts than their patients. You’d be surprised how many hours a shrink has to spend with another shrink before they can get a license.
I hate to quote Trivial Pursuit after learning that the game is rife with inaccuracy but I must.
Q: What is the most common type of hallucination?
A: Auditory
And like Beatle, I have experienced what seem to be lucid auditory hallucinations while hearing the repetetive sounds eminating from things like the dishwasher, lawnmower, or a washer/dryer. I remember lying in bed as a kid, listening to the clothes tumble in the dryer outside my bedroom and creating music in my mind. Occasionally the washing machine would enter a spin cycle which combined with the clanks of zippers and buttons in the dryer and punk rock was born! As an adult, I seem to have somewhat lost touch with my creative consciousness but I still occasionally enjoy a creative auditory hallicination.
Imagination or Insanity? I could care less, it is an entertaining distraction.
And remember the distinction that was made earlier between occasional hallucinations (once in a while before going to bed) and what those with a real problem hear, a melange of voices that go on for an extended period of time.
The reason they often “get off” for it is because they have a problem, and it seriously effects their judgement. So, instead of being put in an electric chair for a gruesome triple murder, they get sent to a psychiatric ward in order that they may, possibly be cured.
I don’t know how old it is, but the idea of not killing the insane when they do wrong is based on a fairly simple premise.
Many say the penal system has (at least) two purposes. Punishment and reform. How can you possibly punish someone who is incapable of understanding that what he did was wrong?