
The Sound of Madness - fmihaila
https://harpers.org/archive/2018/06/the-sound-of-madness/
======
zeta0134
I spent two years living with a man, then my lover, who refused to seek
medical help but almost certainly had something like disassociative identity.
He had learned to cope with it by giving his voices distinct names, and
adopting their personas over times, often in response to external stimuli. As
an outside observer with no such symptoms of my own, I found this completely
fascinating.

He's very spiritual, one of his inner voices would often come out and sage the
house, offer prayers, and perform personal rituals which he kept secret.
Otherwise though, I found that his personas largely reflected his current
emotional state. One persona would almost always be "out" when he was upset
with a friend, or struggling with some stress. Another was more childlike and
playful. He described them as always there, and even though he appeared to
allow one of them to be "in charge" as he put it, he said the voices were
always in the back of his mind, directing his thoughts.

The experience has opened my eyes, and allowed me to see these disorders in a
more positive light. I never told him what I thought of his diagnosis and
never felt the need; while his condition lent itself to occasional mood
swings, he made a point of _respecting_ his voices, allowed them to become a
part of him, and I feel had largely learned to cope. He could even switch his
behaviors off for a while when needed, usually for work or when he felt the
need to be professional.

I don't think medication would have helped, not that he would have taken it.
He had figured himself out for better or worse, and I just learned to accept
him as he was.

~~~
montyf
> Otherwise though, I found that his personas largely reflected his current
> emotional state. One persona would almost always be "out" when he was upset
> with a friend, or struggling with some stress. Another was more childlike
> and playful. He described them as always there, and even though he appeared
> to allow one of them to be "in charge" as he put it, he said the voices were
> always in the back of his mind, directing his thoughts.

That doesn't sound like a disorder. The abnormal thing about your friend is
that he is more aware than the average person.

The illusion of a single, unified self is just that. When you talk to people
in your dreams, who are you talking to? Their responses are quite intelligent,
if you listen. When you say embarrassing things under anesthesia with no
memory of it, who said those things? When you get irrationally angry, who the
hell is it that comes out? Same with the alcoholic who swears one day he'll
quit and forgets about it the next day -- different people.

Moreover, there are huge areas of your brain that work quietly and
subconsciously (from your perspective). Not only are they conscious, they're
smarter than you. They prove it through intuition and gut feeling, if you
listen.

> while his condition lent itself to occasional mood swings, he made a point
> of _respecting_ his voices, allowed them to become a part of him, and I feel
> had largely learned to cope.

I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but I found your tone somewhat
condescending. It's not his alternate selves that he needs to "cope" with, but
society's notion that something is wrong with him. This might sound too new-
age for people, but the more aware you are, the more you realize just how sick
_everyone else_ is. We literally have conscious beings imprisoned within us.

> He had figured himself out for better or worse

Probably figured himself out better than the rest of us ever will.

~~~
red75prime
Broca's area is certainly expert in language, but when it runs on its own you
get "embarrassing things under anesthesia". The central control of all
subsystems is essential for coherent functioning.

~~~
montyf
Is central control necessary? I know it's a tough pill to swallow, but I
encourage you to think about it some more. And don't think in terms of
subsystems but rather real entities.

~~~
el_cid
Well considering that a large sub-set of people who hear voices commit suicide
and/or kill their relatives in cold blood I would say that yes, central
control is necessary.

~~~
creep
We commit suicide because our parents, friends, and the community as a whole
are trying to forcibly remove something that can never be wiped away, causing
anxiety and fear which amplify every negative aspect of the
voices/beings/visions. Suicide is never a risk for me when I have someone to
talk to who will listen to me and take me seriously. It's a risk when I feel
as though my existence is a mistake because almost everyone treats it as such.
It's not a mistake. There's a reason why every sz person I know has a very
spiritual aspect to their voices. I've accepted it and I listen, and I gain
benefit, but most people with such experiences are told there is something
inherently wrong with them and that their experiences are artificial. To that
I say, it's no more artificial than your reality.

------
mirimir
Good article.

But it doesn't mention the self-talk aka "stream of consciousness" that
virtually everyone hears. And a key insight is that it's not _our_
consciousness. It's basically just recordings that get played back on queue. A
central aspect of meditation is becoming aware of that voice as something
distinct from self.

So anyway, it's best to think "Thanks for sharing :)" and then to do something
intentional.

~~~
danieltillett
As someone who normally doesn't have the self-talk module running, I was
amazed to learn that most people have it running all the time. I only use the
module when writing, otherwise my consciousness is normally non-verbal.

I suspect it is related, but when I read I don't hear the words unless I
deliberately choose to read the text in my head, otherwise my process is
written word -> concept.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It seems to be similar with mental pictures.

[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-
from-one-example)

"The debate [over mental imagery] was resolved by Francis Galton (...). Galton
gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have
mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone
did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point
of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or
misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability,
from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery to three
percent of people completely unable to form mental images."

Personally, I'm someone with small-talk module running almost constantly,
verbalizing most of my thinking and reading. On the other hand, I have very
low capability of forming mental images.

I wonder how many other things in brain are like that, widely differing
between people.

~~~
danieltillett
I suspect that there is quite a large variation between people, but it has not
really been studied because it is almost impossible to get funding to study
differences that don't cause a problem to an individual. It is a shame because
I find this topic fascinating.

I have a pet theory that more visual thinking is something that has come in
from our Neanderthal ancestors. We know they had a brain more specialised
around visual processing, but very little beyond this. It is almost certain
that some people today think in a similar way to Neanderthals given how much
of the Neanderthal genome is still present in the human population, but who
they are and what they think like is unknown.

~~~
LoSboccacc
I wonder instead if it comes from early development, like having a
preponderance of picture vs written books as a toddler and at what point of
development getting read stories has an influence if any

~~~
danieltillett
It is possible, but I suspect that any difference is formed earlier than this.
I know I thought the way I think long before I learned to read.

I remember very clearly learning about the concept of the written word. Once
it clicked suddenly I noticed the whole world was filled with words (not that
I knew what most of them meant). The world was now very different to how I saw
it before and I became fascinated with knowing what they all were (I used to
drive my mother crazy asking her what every sign said).

I am also not sure if this is also related, but I was apparently quite a late
talker (around 24 months), but once I started talking I was far ahead of other
children of my age.

------
jtolds
I kept waiting for this article to mention Julian Jaynes' hypothesis on the
origin of consciousness but it never did. It's super fascinating though!

Essentially, ancient history all the way up to Greece had this feature that
people heard voices all the time _and_ it never seemed unusual to anyone. His
hypothesis is that maybe written history started _before_ the evolution of
what we now call consciousness and we witnessed it in written history.

[http://www.julianjaynes.org/julian-jaynes-theory-
overview.ph...](http://www.julianjaynes.org/julian-jaynes-theory-overview.php)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)#The_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_\(psychology\)#The_Origin_of_Consciousness)

~~~
mirimir
Right. Stephenson's _Snow Crash_ riffs on that.

~~~
jpttsn
As does _Westworld_.

------
no_identd
Heh. I had hoped this would turn into a sequel to this article:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2016/03/schizophrenia_and_subvocal_speech_why_schizophrenics_hear_the_voices_of.html)

Unfortunately, it didn't. Still a good read, tho.

~~~
mirimir
That's what I was thinking.

But damn, I've never seen entities talking to me. Except on acid, and
sometimes when very stoned. But only with my eyes closed.

~~~
girvo
LSD (a huge dose of liquid, straight up ego death for 6 hours) and DMT have
both allowed me to experience entities and “converse” with them in a manner of
speaking. An enjoyable couple of experiences, but I can understand why it’d be
scary to experience outside of a psychedelic trip.

~~~
bigbugbag
Please do not talk of huge dose of liquid when talking of very potent
substances such as LSD. A very heavy dose of LSD is about 350µg or 350/1 000
000g. which is such a small quantity that you cannot see it.

One can put 50µg in 1 liter of water and drink a lot of liquid but ingest a
light dose while a single drop can contain enough to heavy trip several
people.

~~~
mirimir
Due to a dilution error, I did 3000µg once.

The point of mentioning "liquid LSD" (typically in 80% ethanol) is that it was
usually the purest available. And easiest to verify purity. It should be
colorless. And a sample containing 500µg should leave no visible residue when
dried on glass. Common adulterants would be present at much higher
concentrations. Unless some jerk added fentanyl or Botulinum toxin :(

------
forkLding
Remember reading about avatar therapy, interesting to see it only be a recent
thing. The article was on how software through constructing 3D faces (using a
game engine I believe) was helping schizophrenics and that they were branching
into VR research as well.

~~~
bitwize
Yeah, they would build an avatar to represent the persona of a schizophrenic's
head-voice and give it a synthesized voice that sounded like what the
schizophrenic heard. Then they would puppet the avatar, engaging the patient
in dialogue, slowly making it say less and less harmful things, and eventually
ceding control to the patient. The patient would come away feeling more in
control, and less threatened or coerced by the voices. Fascinating stuff.

------
bigbugbag
The article repeat a few times that people hearing voices often hate them,
that voices are harsh and say terrible things but it overlooked that this is
only the case in the US and occident meanwhile in Africa the voices are kind
and say nice things.

[https://news.stanford.edu/2014/07/16/voices-culture-
luhrmann...](https://news.stanford.edu/2014/07/16/voices-culture-
luhrmann-071614/)

------
rubzah
Surprised no one had mentioned John Nash and _A Beautiful Mind_. I won't spoil
it for anyone that doesn't know the story but it is very reminiscent of the
woman in the article.

------
SlowRobotAhead
This was a great article that I’m glad I’m not reading in my early twenties.
(For mild hypochondriac fears!)

