Person-ness of voices in lived experience accounts of psychosis: combining literary linguistics and clinical psychology

A literary linguistic framework for analyzing fictional characters can illuminate how people who hear voices perceive those voices as social agents. The authors propose a Characterisation Model of Voices that captures varying degrees of person-ness voices may possess. Applying the model to two interview accounts from voice-hearers in a psychosis intervention reveals nuanced differences in how voices are experienced as character-like. This approach offers insights into the phenomenology of voice-hearing and may inform therapeutic interventions.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In this paper, we use concepts and insights from the literary linguistic study of story-world characters to shed new light on the nature of voices as social agents in the context of lived experience accounts of voice-hearing. We demonstrate a considerable overlap between approaches to voices as social agents in clinical psychology and the perception of characters in the linguistic study of fiction, but argue that the literary linguistic approach facilitates a much more nuanced account of the different degrees of person-ness voices might be perceived to possess. We propose a scalar Characterisation Model of Voices and demonstrate its explanatory potential by comparing two lived experience descriptions of voices in interviews with voice-hearers in a psychosis intervention. The new insights into the phenomenology of voice-hearing achieved by applying the model are relevant to the understanding of voice-hearing as well as to therapeutic interventions.