Psychologist Charles Fernyhough reveals how our inner voices play a vital part in thinking through stories of everyone from children to people who hear voices.
Watch the Q&A here: https://youtu.be/e6Rvae1IBms
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Close your eyes and have a thought. Now what was it like to think that thought? What we usually call ‘thinking’ is often a kind of speaking by, and a listening to, the multiple voices of our consciousness. Psychologist and writer Charles Fernyhough tells stories of everyone from children to people who hear voices and reveals how our inner voices play a vital part in our thinking.
Charles Fernyhough is a Professor in the Department of Psychology, Durham University. His background is in developmental psychology, with a particular focus on social, emotional and cognitive development. His work has contributed to our understanding of how language and thought are related in child development and beyond and his most recent focus has been on applying mainstream developmental psychology to the study of psychosis.
He is also a writer whose work has been published in several anthologies and have been translated into eleven languages. He has taught creative writing, with a particular focus on psychological processes in reading and writing.
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I believe this is why multi lingual is so important! … It opens our minds and our lives to think in other languages too
His talk actually contains little substance. He spends 90% of the time talking about medieval history and manuscripts instead of cutting edge science. I hate to say it, but he is exactly the stereotypical ivory tower scholar who's can't make their research accessible.
Oh, so it's "OK" to hear irrational voices… – NOT! Be sure to ignore irrational irrelevant voices. You will be glad you did.
Talking to yourself is not the same as hearing voices. Just saying… There is a thought process involved in talking to yourself. Not so, with hearing voices.
thank god i found sumthing smart, ugandan knuckles was melting my mind
The voices are our internal aspects- the organs of our psyche. These aspects are the fragments that make us up; and are essentially archetypes.
Taking resting state data in the experiment with the beeps is really clever. It actually made me think of the practice of recording audio "silence" for a few seconds to get the background noise profile of the recording space for later procedural removal in the audio post-production environment. How neat! ?
OH BULLCRAP! I hear voices but they are not hallucinations. For instance a voice told me to search for " The electromagnetic grid". What did I find when I typed that in? Why don't you type it in an see for yourself?
Hindu logic states that "all thought is preceded by motive". I would love to hear your opinion as to what initiates and influences these voices in your head. DNA, Socialisation, hormones, culture, dysfunctional childhood, trauma, vagus nerve, gut bacteria, soul.
What is the motive behind the voices. I would love to see an experiment where sensors are placed to measure hormonal activity and vagus nerve activity to see if there is a correlation between these activities and the voices.
Voices are where we verify reality – where we do a double take – did I just see a cop in a bikini?
I have suffered depression and ptsd occasionally and I welcome this kind of science as a potential solution in the long term.
This is a fascinating lecture but he lacks energy as a storyteller. I would love if an internal voice told him to be a bit more concise and look a bit more happy due to his excellent achievements.
the subconscious often throws up instant answers. Some are close, some are right, and some are wrong. The subconscious guesses. Consciousness is either trained to take a closer logical look at them and change them, or accept them as they are. Consciousness gives the subconscious educated guesses..
The subconscious has access to memory. Many people, including myself, discover that if you have a really tough problem you can’t seem to solve, a good trick is just to forget about it. Consciously assign it to the subconscious. We sometimes say: I’ll sleep on it and let you know.
Often, the answer will just come to you like a revelation. Where did that answer come from? It feels like it comes from elsewhere. And that’s exactly why we believe in gods.
Musicians and writers will tell you: the character, or the song, just seemed to take on a life of its own. It wrote itself.
In the bible, Moses is told to go to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to set his people free. Moses says: God. I’d love to but, you got the wrong guy. I wouldn’t know what to say. And then god gets a little annoyed with him and says: Who do you think puts words in your mouth? I don’t make mistakes. Do what I tell you and I’ll guide you and give you the words.
In an interview I saw with a Native American, he said: “Our tradition tells us that when we have an innovative idea , it’s the gods teaching us.”
So in the minds of our ancient ancestors thought they were incapable of coming up with good ideas on their own. Innovation came from elsewhere. It had to. We hear it all the time. In Sumerian myth, the gods teach them everything. Yet we now see they would assume that because innovative ideas don’t come from consciousness directly.
What they didn’t know was that those ideas did come from themselves. Just like musicians and writers, ancient people were drawing on their own subconscious. No gods, spirits or ancestors required.
We hear people say god talks to them. This is their subconscious. People have an inner dialogue, and brain that if trained or manipulated can give you any spiritual experience you want to have.
This is great. I don't know if anyone else has noticed that US English is what seems like, New speak from 1984 and I find it really worrying because without vocabulary, it's well nigh impossible to think in the abstract, which, of course, was exactly what the Ministry of Truth was doing in Orwell's book. I have developed a bad habit of commenting before I have watched the whole program but I think it's because I am experiencing 'Senior Moments' lol, which makes me think I'll forget what I wanted to say.
Maybe she only made it audible for you because she was trying to express her consciousness to you for reflection. As if she would if looking for approval, so more than trying to speak directly in social communication she is subtly gauging your reactions to her conscious expressions through the most indirect communication methods; she may be in tune to things like your breathing, and what you are doing in the peripheral. Maybe she even can sense how you feel. Do you remember feeling without seeing, and hearing without speaking? Or has all the noise of society turned off those senses to you?
I usually think visually, and only resort to speech to allocate memory when time constraints force me to lose the critical focus required to think visually. Sound takes on the format of melodic music without words. My inner speech is loudest when I am anxious or in need of approval. When I came to terms with what I know and what I don't, and literally embraced the idea that seeing is believing, my inner voice almost completely became irrelevant. It becomes a very extroverted form of expression when people, ideas, or philosophy puts constraints on my perspective.
I see a hundred thousand places and things, people and ideas, and actions all at once. They all reveal a certain truth when you quickly transpose the image of everything in history. The confusing ideas just vanish into the noise and the truth becomes predominant. With the greatest certainty I look in the mirror and know I am right. But these words can't explain why I am right. You really have to see the birds fly at the speed of sound. To understand the abstract I suppose it really takes contrast; so we must also take the time to look into the darkness.
Does this mean I am different; if so, why?
I think you should use your intellect and time to investigate where technology has taken some of us into the realm of harassment via remote neural monitoring and synthetic communication.
One way to simplify the answer you are looking for is to call the voices : tones in charge of certain behaviors and /or actions. Kind of a file for relatable thoughts to intentions.
Revelation 3:
20: Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
John 5:
25: "Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.
26: For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself,
27: and has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man.
28: Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice.
Thanks for showing that self talk is beneficial and not a mental illness, so they cannot oppress people for that. Otherwise, you are not getting anywhere with these studies. V2k causes hearing voices.
i imagine athena maybe got that question from her father "what are you doing?"
what sort of conversations could you influence in a child by starting it off in life of with different questions? what spectrums could we see?
What does it mean when someone doesn't have inner speech?
we live in a fake world, and we are constanlty being programmed via the TV, music, society etc.. Make your own path
Auditory hallucination is as real as the voices in your dream. In your dream you dream that you hear the voices of your mother, siblings and friends, and sometimes the voices of stranger. Same thing happen in the hallucination, except that the voices can get really quiet or very loud, like ten times louder. The hallucination becomes more real and more powerful when you haven't had enough sleep, you have not drink enough water or eat enough food, and when you are suffering other traumas that induced stress and anxieties.
One thing that fascinates me is when my voices would say stop talking when I was just thinking. I would tell them that I was not talking, but thinking. That it was not the same as speaking. They would completely ignore me when I said that, but later continued to judge me for thinking. I would give them examples of what is was like thinking and speaking. They would stay quiet, but then they would continue to press me to stop thinking.
With time, what I learn is that the part of my brain that was in destructive mode, wanted to create stress and anxiety so it would record it in my nervous system, so when this force in my brain wanted to induce anxiety and stress in me, it already have as part of memory.
Honestly, most of my voices are not my own, but they are coming from my brain. In 1999, when I was still in High School, I spoke in tongue and now I believe that was also a sign that I was suffering from schizophrenia as it is understood by psychiatric, but I still hold that our brains are connected to other realms, and those realms are the one causing all this schizophrenia. They are the one creating a different type of mental prison like putting us mentally in a twilight zone where we experience as real something that is not real in this world.
I as develop awareness and become more mindful of what is happening to me, I can see how this energy behind my schizophrenia uses what is already in me to create a different type of reality.
my voices in my haed stop speaking!-im a litte bit afraid of that-but i hear music the whole time-rockn rolly!
Mind bending! 😛
The Science of the Voices in our heads is not as great as the Music of the Voices in Our heads and hearts.
When ''Science'' begins to use their Ears as much as their Eyes their Voices wouldn't be so dry inside but as
"Muse-Eck" really is, moist with overtones overlapping voice leadings, much like a Bach fugue would sound
of Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Baritone, & Bass voices leading in harmony in the 'Symphony of Life's Muses' heard.
I don't understand this lecture. Most people can hear whatever they want to in their head using their imagination. A lot of people can also hear multiple voices in their head similar to the old devil and angel on your shoulders trope. Why are you acting like it's some huge accomplishment that she heard holy ghost bellowing like most people with a working imagination and memory don't hear crap like this all the time. Lectures like this is why it took most of my life to find out I have aphantasia.
I once took an extensive course in Vietnamese language. The sounds of the vowels, diphthongs, tripthongs, some of the consonants, and tones were so different from what we were used to in English that the first 2 weeks of class consisted of nothing more than listening to, and to some extent reproducing, those sounds. No actual words were taught; just the sounds. I began having dreams where 2 Asian men, dressed in black suits and bowler hats, were engaged in a dialogue, conversing at length in Vietnamese, although I still had not learned 1 word of Vietnamese. Their speech was very clear, but I understood very little of it. I mentioned this to a classmate and found out that most members of the class were experiencing the same thing, although the men might be dressed differently. I don't know if that relates to this subject in any way, but I was vividly reminded of it.
I thought this had something to do with concusion related brain injury which turns in to auditory hallucinations.
Its not.
Well, I'm 27 and I still talk to myself. But, that side is usually the righteous side. That tell me don't do that, that's bad or something like that. ….. I thought I did that because I had few friends growing up and most of the time I was alone lol
Having a voice in my head sounds creepy. Glad I don't have one.
Charles Anyhow having an expanded conversation with himself, Athena and Mel Gibson while on DMT. Absolutely riveting, compelling, spellbinding.
Wake me up when auditory hallucinations & dream dialogue can be recorded like that 1990’s movie Strange Days. Picked up maybe indirectly on the breath or in the Lorax or larynx whatever with software cancelling out competing noise.
This interests me because my son is autistic. It seems that he has trouble accessing and expressing language, but his vocalizations are like a “stream of consciousness.” He can understand language perfectly well. In fact, he knows multiple languages. Very interesting indeed.
My opinion is noone can ever talk about sth that they have never learned or experienced before , therefore more we learn more we talk in inner voice … Ask this question to yourself , Have you ever talked about something that you have never heard before ? Basically our inner voice comes through our experiences and life itself as you are learning through it ….
The most interesting question about thought is, "How is it generated?" Does it arise from a non-verbal (pre-verbal?) intuition that becomes "dressed up" in language by some process in the brain before you become aware of it? Or does it arise already dressed up in language? In any case, you do not know what your next thought will be until it pops into your head. The idea of "agency" in this process is highly questionable in my opinion.
this is as real as it gets, no bs here, and this in part has to do with the spiritual world.
Am I the only one that thinks in "internal dialogue" over monologue ?
This was a very interesting lecture.
Such a poor lecturer . . . get ON with it!
On top of this, he doesn't even discuss Julian Jayne's groundbreaking theory discussed in his "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," wherein Jaynes pinpoints the very structures of the brain requiring further medical research that this guy is studying.
I talk to people that others can’t see I am hearing voices a lot
Most of inner speech is tied to a brain network called the Default Mode Network, which is commonly referred to as the "ego" of even "superego" …here inner speech is often tied to thinking about other people; we carry representations of other people who in a sense become the "superego" by which our "ego" is concerned about = inner speech, or even a dialogue between these superegoic representations as others.
Please leave family and especially ' god' out of your videos, its just annoying. Inner voices come from the pineal gland which is in the centre of the brain and deals with inner thoughts and dreams. We are connected through this to consciousness and the universe. Your language theory is waffle and nonsense !
F(#& I hate the OBNOXIOUSLY LOUD sound effects at the beginning of each of these great tRI presentations.