Okay, we’ve all heard these people who make excuses about crimes by talking of “voices.” And, I’ll admit, there might be other people who do go about their daily lives where the voices int heir hed just talk about the weather and such, rather than saying that such and such is out to get the person involved.
But, I’ve never heard of them.
So, are “voices in one’s head” always bad? I’ve heard of people drifting off to sleep, at times, who wind up semi-dreaming and start to hear a voice or two of someone they know, as if it’s an image of something during the day, but that’s more along the lines of dreams, and while it comes rarely, it seems to me that it speaks more of people that one may be thinkingt about at the time, and they just become more vivid in near-REM sleep.
But, voices that one hears in one’s head otherwise are differnt, aren’t they? Or do they represent a different state of consciousness, just like dreams do? Or, perhaps the ones that are nice - the ones that talk about the weather, or how good Grandma’s homemade rolls are - represent that, while the “voices in one’s hed” that say to do nasty stuff are…I don’t know,w hatever psychologists call those voices int he head. Otherwise, wouldn’twe sometimes have philantropists who say “the voices in my head said to establish a trust fun at this college.”
If the voices in your head tell you to anonymously kill a bunch of people while carefully covering your tracks, eventually you’ll end up in newspaper headlines.
But if the voices tell you to anonymously help a bunch of people while carefully covering your tracks, chances are that nobody will ever know your name.
Obviously the difference between the two is the large number of blue-uniformed specialists being paid to track down the anonymous “anti-donors” while leaving the “donors” alone.
Probably fewer people ask donors why they gave money than murderers why they kill. Even if the head of a charity asked, and got such an answer, they probably wouldn’t publicize it, since there’s no way that works out well for them; the person would probably be judged incompetent to make their own decisions, and the charity would lose the money, plus it’s not good publicity.
The voices in a person’s head are most likely to be some level of schizophrenia and are probably the internalised persecutory voices of an authority figure, such as an authoritarian parent. If the figure is punitive or restrictive then what they say is probably negative, hence the number of negative outcomes of the ‘voices in my head’ people you read about.
Auditory hallucinations are typically associated with schizophrenia in general, and paranoid schizophrenia in particular. The inability to integrate perceptions or thoughts creates terrifying confusion and the default behavior is paranoia. A more complex defense would entail enlisting this confusion in the service of the ego and protecting the self with delusions of grandeur. Delusions of grandeur are more complex and thus more rare. Even so, delusions of grandeur don’t make for good philanthropy because the positive voices are directed at the self to protect it from fear, particularly the fear of others. However weird you think a paranoid schizonphrenic is acting, rest assured they think your acting thrice as weird. A defense that entailed someone assuaging their fear of others by attempting to befriend them is way to high an order for an ego that is functioning at the primitive level of the schizophrenic. Roughly 2/3 of those schizophrenics who experience auditory hallucinations characterize them as negative/threatening and 1/3 as positive.
As an aside, typically schizophrenics hear the voices outside their head. The psychiatrist for the prosecution of Kenneth Bianchi (one of the Hillside Stranglers), maintained that Bianchi was lying about having auditory hallucinations because he claimed to hear them directly inside his head.
Also, I suspect that most schizophrenics are not particularly effective in their daily lives and as such most would struggle to have enough money to live on, let alone enough to be a significant philanthropist.
It seems the ‘voices’ are too subjective an experience to have any credibility in philathropy and/or criminality. But at least in criminality it will buy you a ticket to the asylum instead of the pokey.
I admire the guy several years ago who gave his million dollar winning lottery ticket to a church, anonymously. I don’t think they ever found out who that was.
So, I’m driving home one day, right? Suddenly, the voices in my head say, “get on the interstate!” So I do. Then they say, “get off at the airport exit, and go to the airport.” So I do. Next, “catch a flight to Vegas.” So I do. Once there, they say, “go to Harrah’s.” So, I go. “Go to the roulette table and bet on 36 red! Bet a bundle!” Having gone this far, I do. I place my bet and lose. “Damn!” say the voices.
When the voices tell me to go out and shoot some people, I can understand that it could very easily be God asking me to do a little chore for Him, as He is bisy elsewhere looking after the safety of His troops in righteous wars.
If the voices tell me to give money to charity, that’s just a hallucination,as it would be an illogical act.
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IMHBig GrinO- Finnie
There was an excellent SDMB thread from roughly Oct to Dec 03, asking about hearing voices. Many folks who experience voices with varying degrees of severity wrote about their experiences and several mental health experts gave some good info as well. It was much more informative than the bland descriptions one reads on health-related websites.
Since the search function is down now, I can’t link to it, but if you’d like to know more on the topic, check that out in a few days when search returns.
When I was working at a bank, they told us about a teller who processed a bad withdrawal. The account belonged to Mary Roe cust. for John Doe the Deranged. John came to the bank, wanted his money, the teller gave it to him, and next thing anyone knew, John was passing out twenties to passers-by outside the bank. Also, I once knew a psychotic man who giggled from time to time. I asked him what he was laughing at, and he said the voices told him a joke. So yes, it happens. As bbeaty said, it just doesn’t make the papers.
During residency and in my emergency practice, I have seen a number of schizoaffectives who LIKE the voices in their heads because they say positive things. Although this is much rarer than negative projection, it does indeed happen, and people with encouraging voices tend to like them very much and don’t necessarily want them cured! (In the same way, manic-depressives often very much miss the feeling of mania once levelled out with lithium and other drugs).
People can indeed hear voices. I’ve had patients who say the voices say “Way to go!”, “Great job!”, “Give your money away to the needy” and “Invest all your money in baseball cards”. Strange world, eh?