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Psychosis and Hallucinations Some years ago a Scandinavian psychiatrist was talking to a friend of hers and mentioned that one of the main symptoms of psychosis was hearing voices. Her friend remarked matter-of-factly that she had heard voices all her life and they had never bothered her. The psychiatrist was intrigued and put an advert in the paper asking for people who heard voices to contact her. She was inundated with responses from people who heard voices, some for most of their lives. Most said that the voices didn't bother them. Others said that they provided company or even information. A few said they were bothered but didn't report them for fear of being labeled as mad. Hearing voices and other hallucinations are a significant aspect of many mental disorders: Schizophrenia, paranoia and bipolar disorder. They are also an aspect of mystical experiences and with taking certain psychotropic drugs. The problem arises when the experiences become overwhelming. The individual may think they have lost control over their own mind. The voices may say things that are quite destructive, for example they may tell the person to kill their own children. Usually, these voices are a manifestation of subconscious tendencies that the individual is unwilling to acknowledge consciously. Here are some examples, all from personal experience: A woman said that the devil was telling her that she should leave her husband, whom she loved. The reality was that she had been brought up in a strict middle-class environment where ‘good’ women didn't question their husbands. When her husband made some errors of judgment she was unable to face up to her doubts consciously, so the doubts became expressed as voices. The voices couldn't have been hers, after all decent women don't have such thoughts, so they must come from the devil who she believed had taken over her mind. A woman married to a entrepreneur was also very close to her mother. They were having money problems, as is typical when starting up a new business. The mother constantly criticised her husband: ‘Why couldn't you marry someone who could provide you with a regular income?’ She loved her husband but was still heavily influenced by her mother. One day she was unable to function and even to get out of bed. The unresolved conflict between what her mother said and her feelings for her husband caused her brain to stop working. A young man who believed he was highly intelligent was given the job of modifying and implementing a new computer program. He was unable to get to grips with it but because he was unable to admit either to himself or to others that he had a problem, his behaviour became more and more bizarre. He started ‘challenging’ people to IQ tests and became aggressive when anyone questioned him. Finally he was referred to a psychiatrist when he attacked someone who questioned him at work. Many problems of psychosis are due to a lack of understanding of the individual’s own psyche. The issues that argent resolved at a deep level surface as voices or hallucinations that the person can’t associate as being part of their own mind. There is another element of voices or hallucinations, however, and that is when they genuinely do originate from outside the person’s own mind. I have pointed out previously (‘Expanding Consciousness’) that at a deep level we are all connected. Voices and visions can come from these elements of the psyche, from the spirit world and from the spirits of people who have passed on from this world. People who get these hallucinations may not necessarily understand them and may corrupt the message with what is called ‘emotional contamination’. That is, they put their own interpretation on the message. It is very difficult for a clairvoyant to remain detached and interpret these messages objectively. I’ll discuss this more later.