Hearing voices and others within more

Hearing voices and others within, Kevin Magill A short, unresearched, wildly speculative and rather weird paper presented at a symposium on ‘Radical Otherness’ at the University of Wolverhampton, 17th November 2010 Visionaries, prophets and mad men have often reported a kind of dialogue with, or a sense of, another within: a presence that is expressed as or through an inner voice; an inner peace: an answer, sometimes, to a prayer or a problem. Whatever might be said about the idea of the radical other as a way of evaluating and thinking about self, identity, belonging and relations to others, or as a critical perspective on or alternative to multiculturalism, liberal tolerance and so on, the hearing of inner voices, or the idea of another within, involves notions of otherness that are very difficult to reconcile with ordinary assumptions of self and identity, which have no place or space for others within. Notions of an inner voice are not, of course, limited to the kind of supposed dialogue or relationship with another – inner – presence of the kind I'm talking about. Many have spoken of conscience, moral sense and even the capacity and exercise of reason as a kind of inner command or voice – one that has an independence from venal self-interested passions and interests, but without any implication or belief that this voice represents a distinctive and present inner-intelligence. This sense of an inner voice, lacking the implication of an inner presence, isn't one that can be neatly distinguished from that which does, as if it were a clearly separate notion. Nevertheless, it is the idea of a palpable inner presence or intelligence that I want to talk about. By contrast, it is debatable whether the idea of an inner presence always involves that of any voice, as such, in the sense of something heard to speak (if only mentally). For some, their putative awareness of an inner presence might have been owed to a sense or understanding of something unspoken but in some sense felt. For the contemporary secular rationalist (my stalking horse for the day), the idea that conscience or reason can be experienced or understood as an inner voice can be viewed as unproblematic and assimilable: the inner voice is a metaphor, a way of talking, implying no occult entities. But what of nonmetaphorical inner voices and presences? The range of such inner-other communication or understanding can be characterised and understood in many different ways, but the major or dominant descriptions in contemporary educated discourse are those that categorise the phenomena in more or less pathological terms: as schizoid/schizophrenic, delusional, over-imaginative and so on. Thus, the state of mind and wellbeing of the saint and prophet can be compared and corralled with their contemporary quarantined or regulated successors among the insane, drug affected, feverous or sleep deprived. It can be allowed, of course, by open-minded secular rationalists, that the inner voices of some visionaries and saints might have beneficial insights and should not be too crudely or quickly parceled together with the murderous instructions heard by the paranoid schizophrenic, but to the extent that such beneficial insights are thought to issue from an other non-metaphorical intelligence, they should be thought of as delusional, pathological. This at any rate is the tidy temptation for secular, liberal rationalism. Hearing voices, along with the kinds of behaviour and thinking that often accompany it, such as fervour, vehemence, or paranoia, can all be thought of, as they can often certainly seem, as manifestations of self-importance, anxiety or attachment; born of inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality, and from other things besides. Perhaps, but let us consider such phenomena from a different point of view. We imagine that inner voices are an expression of some inner dysfunction or lack of equilibrium, but let us consider instead the possibility that hearing or awareness of inner voices and inner presences, as well as the fervour of hearers, might reflect a heightened recognition of or connection with a need, shared by all of us but largely unrecognised. We assume that it is healthy not to hear voices and to have some kind of singular executive control. Consider instead that each of us has an inbuilt but unrealised capacity, waiting to be awakened, for another within: another intelligence; an advisor, lacking higher executive control. But wouldn't that be, as we imagine it to be for those who do or have heard voices, an illusion? For after all, the hearer of voices is listening to himself or herself, whether that be a part of herself providing moral guidance and reason, or a part of herself that has `gone wrong' and is behaving in an irrational and dysfunctional manner. In the former case, we imagine, the appropriate course would be a therapy that allows the hearer to assimilate and identify with her own inner voice, thus to achieve greater self-integration. In the latter case, we might think, it isn't so much self-integration as rectifying the malfunctioning faculty that is called for. the right course, necessarily, to recognise the inner voice as ones own? To identify and own it is part of ones self? There are two obvious reasons for thinking that this is the right attitude. One is the idea that the more self-integration each of us has, the better. The second is that the other voice is, after all, unreal and that to hear it as the expression of a distinct intelligence is illusory. Either or both of these reasons could be sound, but for the secular rationalist, committed to investigation, evidence and analysis, the possibility that they might be wrong can't be ruled out. Supposing, in the spirit of materialist secular rationalism, that the other voice or presence is a function of the brain, and in that sense real enough, what basis is there for treating it as unreal, less real, or somehow derivative in relation to the executive self? And, contrary to the assumption that greater self-integration is always desirable and healthy, mightn't it be possible that there are limits to what we should try to control and integrate within ourselves? Might there be something within mind and brain that it is more natural to relate to as other, or partly so? So, might it be natural and healthier to us (the return to some kind of Hegelian differentiated unity maybe?) to have another within, a guardian, a moral centre, a spiritual other. Maybe it would be nearer the mark to say that what is needed is recognition of the other that is already within us, by focusing our attention on the streams and thoughts that constitute that other. If each of us were to have another within, or if we were to develop (through meditation perhaps?) a kind of self-understanding in which this were the case, might this also change how we see, think about, relate to and behave towards other people and groups? i.e. would it provide a basis for wider recognition of the radical other? I have no suggestions about that, but would be interested to hear what others think. *From Wikipedia: In 1976, psychologist Julian Jaynes published a book entitled The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. His hypothesis was that the human mind, from ancient times to as recently as 3000 years ago, assumed a state which he termed bicameral mind. In this state, cognitive functions were divided into two distinct sections, with one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys. Jaynes proposed that in those times, humans did not possess the self-awareness component of consciousness, and that at that time people would experience the world in a manner similar to modern-day people suffering from schizophrenia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_His_Emissary