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The Voices Within: The History and Science of How We Talk to Ourselves
We all hear voices. Ordinary thinking is often a kind of conversation, filling our heads with speech: the voices of reason, of memory, of self-encouragement and rebuke, the inner dialogue that helps us with tough decisions or complicated problems. For others - voice-hearers, trauma-sufferers and prophets - the voices seem to come from outside: friendly voices, malicious ones, the voice of God or the Devil, the muses of art and literature.
In The Voices Within, Royal Society Prize shortlisted psychologist Charles Fernyhough draws on extensive original research and a wealth of cultural touchpoints to reveal the workings of our inner voices, and how those voices link to creativity and development. From Virginia Woolf to the modern Hearing Voices Movement, Fernyhough also transforms our understanding of voice-hearers past and present.
Building on the latest theories, including the new 'dialogic thinking' model, and employing state-of-the-art neuroimaging and other ground-breaking research techniques, Fernyhough has written an authoritative and engaging guide to the voices in our heads.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published April 14, 2016
138 people are currently reading
2515 people want to read
About the author
Charles Fernyhough
11 books45 followersCharles Fernyhough is a writer and psychologist. His non-fiction book about his daughter’s psychological development, The Baby in the Mirror, was published by Granta in 2008. His book on autobiographical memory, Pieces of Light (Profile, 2012) was shortlisted for the 2013 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. His latest non-fiction book, on the voices in our heads, is published by Profile/Wellcome Collection in the UK and by Basic Books (2016) in the US. He is the editor of Others (Unbound, 2019), an anthology exploring how books and literature can show us other points of view, with net profits supporting refugee and anti-hate charities.
Charles is the author of two novels, The Auctioneer (Fourth Estate, 1999) and A Box Of Birds (Unbound, 2013). His fiction has been published in several anthologies including New Writing 11 and New Writing 14. His books have been translated into twelve languages.
Charles has written for Scientific American, LA Times, TIME Ideas, Nature, New Scientist, BBC Focus, Guardian, Observer, Financial Times, Literary Review, Sunday Telegraph, Lancet, Scotland on Sunday, Huffington Post, Daily Beast and Sydney Morning Herald. He blogs for the US magazine Psychology Today and has made numerous TV and radio appearances in the UK and US, including BBC2’s Horizon, BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week, Woman’s Hour, All in the Mind and The Digital Human, and BBC World Service’s The Forum. He has acted as consultant on theatre productions on Broadway and the West End, numerous TV (BBC1 and Channel 4) and radio documentaries and several other artistic projects.
Charles is a part-time Professor of Psychology at Durham University, where he leads the interdisciplinary Hearing the Voice project, investigating the phenomenon of auditory verbal hallucinations. He has published more than a hundred peer-reviewed journal articles on topics such as inner speech, memory and child development.
Charles is the author of two novels, The Auctioneer (Fourth Estate, 1999) and A Box Of Birds (Unbound, 2013). His fiction has been published in several anthologies including New Writing 11 and New Writing 14. His books have been translated into twelve languages.
Charles has written for Scientific American, LA Times, TIME Ideas, Nature, New Scientist, BBC Focus, Guardian, Observer, Financial Times, Literary Review, Sunday Telegraph, Lancet, Scotland on Sunday, Huffington Post, Daily Beast and Sydney Morning Herald. He blogs for the US magazine Psychology Today and has made numerous TV and radio appearances in the UK and US, including BBC2’s Horizon, BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week, Woman’s Hour, All in the Mind and The Digital Human, and BBC World Service’s The Forum. He has acted as consultant on theatre productions on Broadway and the West End, numerous TV (BBC1 and Channel 4) and radio documentaries and several other artistic projects.
Charles is a part-time Professor of Psychology at Durham University, where he leads the interdisciplinary Hearing the Voice project, investigating the phenomenon of auditory verbal hallucinations. He has published more than a hundred peer-reviewed journal articles on topics such as inner speech, memory and child development.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews
November 10, 2016
While this topic is very interesting, I don't think anything in this book was groundbreaking in it's approach. It basically told me everything I already knew about "listening to voices", the only difference was that there was a lot of scientific terms thrown around and a lot of conjectures that the book itself says cannot be tested. I do appreciate the moments of science this book had , but I still feel like i put myself through a grueling book and I have nothing to show for it . It's language is very dry and the chapters are not very well structured, a meh for me .... the topic tough was very interesting in itself and I hope it's more properly studied in the future.
November 10, 2016
I found this nonfiction book, The Voices Within by Charles Fernyhough, stimulating and refreshing—like cold, fizzy ginger ale for your brain. The author explores some fascinating similarities/differences among public speech, private speech (talking to yourself), inner speech (the silent “talking” that goes on in your head, including both “telegraphic” and “dialogic” forms), silent reading, reading aloud, inner/outer dialogue, and that complicated amalgam of logic, language, imagery, memory, feelings, and sensory impressions that we call “thought.”
I have always been curious about these issues, and even more so since I recently started meditating and observing my own thoughts. As a child, I remember the exact moment when I first learned to read silently as opposed to aloud. I recall reading more and more softly until I unexpectedly made the leap into inner space, reading the words silently in my head. I noticed how much faster and easier it felt. And deliciously private. Very freeing.
Did you know that, according to many researchers, the first documented description of the practice of silent reading is from AD 385? St. Augustine was amazed to see a bishop “doing something very strange” (appearing to read without speaking aloud).
The author periodically invites the reader to explore his/her own thoughts. For instance, “Stop reading now, and close your eyes, and think of something, anything. Then open your eyes and describe that thought” (my paraphrase). I was surprised to discover that my thought, on this occasion, was wordless: just a brief mental video of me walking into town hall to vote.
Yet, today, as I took a forty-minute walk, I spent the entire time thinking in complete sentences and paragraphs, even mentally editing and reworking my silent commentary. For the first twenty minutes or so, I was engaged in an imaginary conversation with someone who had asked what I thought about the election. For the second half of the walk, I was mentally composing this book review.
My favorite part of the book is when the author discusses the voice quality of our inner speech and how it may change when we are silently reading fiction. He shares scientific research showing how our brains react differently when silently reading direct quotes (She said, “I hate broccoli”) vs. indirect quotes (she said that she hates broccoli). For direct quotes, a part of the brain responsible for auditory processing is activated, but not so for indirect quotes.
If you have heard a writer speak, you may “hear” his/her voice narrating when you read. Even more interestingly, when we read fiction, the inner voice changes according to which character (or narrator) is speaking. But how is the “voice” determined, when you’ve never actually heard that character speak aloud? I love Fernyhough’s conclusion: “At some level the voice I hear must be of my own making; I must be creating it and ventriloquizing it in my own inner speech” (p. 8).
My least favorite part of the book was about pathological inner voices, for example auditory hallucinations associated with schizophrenia. I did appreciate the author’s efforts to reduce the stigma of “voice-hearing.” He points out that this experience is not always associated with mental illness. Still, there is the implication that a brain glitch is responsible. When he extended this line of thinking to spiritual experience, I lost interest. Yes, I suppose Joan of Arc’s “voices” might very well have been the result of temporal lobe epilepsy, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that the millions of people who hear God’s voice in one form or another are either self-deceived or mentally defective.
I have always been curious about these issues, and even more so since I recently started meditating and observing my own thoughts. As a child, I remember the exact moment when I first learned to read silently as opposed to aloud. I recall reading more and more softly until I unexpectedly made the leap into inner space, reading the words silently in my head. I noticed how much faster and easier it felt. And deliciously private. Very freeing.
Did you know that, according to many researchers, the first documented description of the practice of silent reading is from AD 385? St. Augustine was amazed to see a bishop “doing something very strange” (appearing to read without speaking aloud).
The author periodically invites the reader to explore his/her own thoughts. For instance, “Stop reading now, and close your eyes, and think of something, anything. Then open your eyes and describe that thought” (my paraphrase). I was surprised to discover that my thought, on this occasion, was wordless: just a brief mental video of me walking into town hall to vote.
Yet, today, as I took a forty-minute walk, I spent the entire time thinking in complete sentences and paragraphs, even mentally editing and reworking my silent commentary. For the first twenty minutes or so, I was engaged in an imaginary conversation with someone who had asked what I thought about the election. For the second half of the walk, I was mentally composing this book review.
My favorite part of the book is when the author discusses the voice quality of our inner speech and how it may change when we are silently reading fiction. He shares scientific research showing how our brains react differently when silently reading direct quotes (She said, “I hate broccoli”) vs. indirect quotes (she said that she hates broccoli). For direct quotes, a part of the brain responsible for auditory processing is activated, but not so for indirect quotes.
If you have heard a writer speak, you may “hear” his/her voice narrating when you read. Even more interestingly, when we read fiction, the inner voice changes according to which character (or narrator) is speaking. But how is the “voice” determined, when you’ve never actually heard that character speak aloud? I love Fernyhough’s conclusion: “At some level the voice I hear must be of my own making; I must be creating it and ventriloquizing it in my own inner speech” (p. 8).
My least favorite part of the book was about pathological inner voices, for example auditory hallucinations associated with schizophrenia. I did appreciate the author’s efforts to reduce the stigma of “voice-hearing.” He points out that this experience is not always associated with mental illness. Still, there is the implication that a brain glitch is responsible. When he extended this line of thinking to spiritual experience, I lost interest. Yes, I suppose Joan of Arc’s “voices” might very well have been the result of temporal lobe epilepsy, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that the millions of people who hear God’s voice in one form or another are either self-deceived or mentally defective.
February 7, 2017
It was wonderful to find a book all about inner speech, since inner speech is the basis of the language learning model I have developed over years of teaching English in Taiwan: the Echo Method. I've gleaned some good quotes from the book for my research and writing, something that overall has been pretty difficult to come by, since there seems to be relatively little research on the topic so far, especially as relates to language learning. I also enjoyed listening to a talk by the author on YouTube and the Q & A session that followed it.
Want to read
March 16, 2017
THE VOICES IN OUR HEADS
Why do people talk to themselves, and when does it become a problem?
in:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...
September 8, 2017
There's a bit too much space given to the auditory hallucinations of the schizophrenia-spectrum disorder, but overall a good book about our inner dialog. The section about how some fiction writers literally just listen in to the conversation of their character as if they were real and independent people was quite new and amazing to me.
March 18, 2024
This book was much more academic than other nonfiction books I have read. It was interesting to learn more about what we don't know about the brain and how we think. As someone who constantly talks to herself, there were certain things that really blew my mind (like am I the speaker in my head or the listener)but overall this book was rather dry. I think the best chapter was the last one bc it really made me think!
July 7, 2016
Immensely readable - as always with Charles Fernyhough's books. Fascinating insight into the ways and reasons we use our inner voices to aid our thinking, solve problems, be creative. Excellent survey of the history of voice hearers and their social contexts. It speaks to each of us directly because we can all identify with the ideas within our own experience.
Although his research is thorough and pertinent, there is a strong sense of immediacy and discovery as Charles Fernyhough explains and exemplifies his points. I find this very appealing and far removed from the dry exposition of knowledge that some worthy science books give to the reader.
Although his research is thorough and pertinent, there is a strong sense of immediacy and discovery as Charles Fernyhough explains and exemplifies his points. I find this very appealing and far removed from the dry exposition of knowledge that some worthy science books give to the reader.
February 28, 2021
I feel bad rating this so low, because for the first couple of chapters I really loved this book. After that it lost my attention and became a fight to get through to the end. Really interesting subject matter, though, and it made me eerily aware of my own inner thoughts throughout.
August 30, 2017
I think this book deserves 5 stars, but some things just bugged me to much to let go.
This book is decidedly about an original topic. No where else have I come across anyone studying inner voices like this, and I think the author is right in thinking it is very important if we want to understand hallucinations, and generally how we think.
The book induces distraction, because you spend half the time reading trying to pay attention to your own reading voice. This gave me the illusion of boredom, but it really is interesting, both the topic and the way it is presented.
The book is an overview of what has been observed so far. Most things haven't been rigorously put to the test like other language related topics, but clearly they are still in the exploratory phase, and so rightfully are keeping an open mind. In fact the author quite admirably presents other's opinions gratuitously and generously, even when they contrast his own. He provides many accounts from people who head voices "pathologically" and just accounts of the internal voice most of us have. He details studies of interrupting thoughts and asking about them, neuroimaging studies, psychophysics and other behavioral experiments, questionnaires, and interviews. Almost everything is convincing, although the end interpretation is still open.
What I didn't like was the structure of the book. Despite covering some clearly distinct topics, the author broke the book down into almost random little chapters that flowed well between each other, but weren't the kind you could selectively read or reference. It was more like a novel in this sense, which is great for novels, but not for non fiction. I also found it annoying when he would present certain ideas that were so clearly wrong, and only later clear this up. This is good for contemporary opinions that haven't been resolved, but is misleading when referring to outdated ideas, such as Freud and Jung's. I would get all worked up about how stupid an idea is, and then realize the author actually agrees with me.
Still, it's a worthwhile read for anyone, although it will make you go a bit cross-eyed as you try to listen in on your own thoughts.
This book is decidedly about an original topic. No where else have I come across anyone studying inner voices like this, and I think the author is right in thinking it is very important if we want to understand hallucinations, and generally how we think.
The book induces distraction, because you spend half the time reading trying to pay attention to your own reading voice. This gave me the illusion of boredom, but it really is interesting, both the topic and the way it is presented.
The book is an overview of what has been observed so far. Most things haven't been rigorously put to the test like other language related topics, but clearly they are still in the exploratory phase, and so rightfully are keeping an open mind. In fact the author quite admirably presents other's opinions gratuitously and generously, even when they contrast his own. He provides many accounts from people who head voices "pathologically" and just accounts of the internal voice most of us have. He details studies of interrupting thoughts and asking about them, neuroimaging studies, psychophysics and other behavioral experiments, questionnaires, and interviews. Almost everything is convincing, although the end interpretation is still open.
What I didn't like was the structure of the book. Despite covering some clearly distinct topics, the author broke the book down into almost random little chapters that flowed well between each other, but weren't the kind you could selectively read or reference. It was more like a novel in this sense, which is great for novels, but not for non fiction. I also found it annoying when he would present certain ideas that were so clearly wrong, and only later clear this up. This is good for contemporary opinions that haven't been resolved, but is misleading when referring to outdated ideas, such as Freud and Jung's. I would get all worked up about how stupid an idea is, and then realize the author actually agrees with me.
Still, it's a worthwhile read for anyone, although it will make you go a bit cross-eyed as you try to listen in on your own thoughts.
August 16, 2018
Sometimes you read a book that changes how you view or understand the world. This is one of those books.
I actually picked this up assuming it was mostly focused on schizophrenia and the associated voice hearing, and while it does touch on that topic in some depth, The Voices Within is actually about how we all 'hear' voices - our internal dialogue.
Charles Fernyhough details the development of how we understand language - internal and external - and how this effects how we understand the world around us and interact with it.
'Thinking' as 'talking' or 'hearing' isn't something I'd thought about before but it's definitely something I think about a lot now.
I actually picked this up assuming it was mostly focused on schizophrenia and the associated voice hearing, and while it does touch on that topic in some depth, The Voices Within is actually about how we all 'hear' voices - our internal dialogue.
Charles Fernyhough details the development of how we understand language - internal and external - and how this effects how we understand the world around us and interact with it.
'Thinking' as 'talking' or 'hearing' isn't something I'd thought about before but it's definitely something I think about a lot now.
December 26, 2018
Next time you talk to yourself, it won't be a just crazy habit but a series of your mental processes - I think that awareness is the biggest takeaway for me. The book though interesting in the beginning, slowly begins to lose its charm half way. The experiments begin to seem repetitive and the chapters seem to have more or less the same conclusions. Though the language is simple, and the context very interesting, book may become a bit of drag later. But I think my impatience might be blamed a bit too here
January 10, 2017
I was pleased to win this on Goodreads because, due to poor hearing, I have tinnitus; I am fortunate because I "hear" beautiful music. The book was not a particularly easy read for me but I found it very informative and well written. Like most people, I also have my own discussions with my internal voice. Nice to know that, in least that respect, I'm normal.
June 4, 2021
What is going on in YOUR head? Are there voices in there that might not be yours? Is it a voice or is it imagery? Full sentences or just quick phrases and words that get the point across? I could go on and on with questions like these because it is fascinating and thought provoking. This book is about our inner voice and thought processes and how science is attempting to study it. The author takes a few different paths to explain these inner voices including fiction authors relating to their characters, schizophrenia and other mental illness, ecclesiastical pronouncements, and child development. The first part of the book is more about the science with mapping the brain with scans, describing the DES method (descriptive experience sampling), and hypotheses from various scientists. This subject matter is not widely studied and the author does a good job of pointing that out throughout the book while still trying to make some headway into proving and disproving aspects of the subject. The second part of the book is more stories. In this part, I found the studying of deaf people and their inner voices absolutely amazing. All together this was an enlightening read for me.
June 26, 2022
This is such an exciting read! I don't think many people have thought intensely about their inner voice because it's a part of everyday life - but this phenomenon is anything but mundane. It's distracting to try to read this because you'll start overanalyzing your own reading voice as you read this, which is in itself a fun experience.
There's a lot to unpack here and the second half of this book is heavy on voice hearing conditions such as schizophrenia which felt like a bit of a long tangent. Specific chapters can read like a scientific literature review, whereas other chapters read like interesting stories being told around a campfire. Despite the inconsistency, I enjoyed the content very much.
There's a lot to unpack here and the second half of this book is heavy on voice hearing conditions such as schizophrenia which felt like a bit of a long tangent. Specific chapters can read like a scientific literature review, whereas other chapters read like interesting stories being told around a campfire. Despite the inconsistency, I enjoyed the content very much.
August 3, 2017
A fascinating subject - the inner voices that nearly all of us 'hear' in one form or another - is given serious and capable exploration by the author. When reading about complex subjects however, 'exploration' of research often leads to any central argument getting lost amongst endless summaries of research papers and inconclusive findings. My interest in this book varied as some chapters felt like they were genuinely providing insight and knowledge, while others were infodumps of research which did little to engage me or advance my understanding. Worth reading, but be prepared to skim certain sections in order to find the best parts.
February 28, 2017
There's good evidence that most (but surprisingly, to me, not all) of us hear voices that have no external auditory stimulus. In most cases we attribute them to ourselves thinking. Charles Fernyhough, an English psychologist and novelist, has written this account of what is conjectured and known about the "voices in our heads". I originally it picked up because I thought it might say something about the process of thought and in fact it does. For example, using MRIs psychologists are beginning to map the structures within the brain that are active while we engage in reflective thought. The book also deals with issues I had not considered, such as the issue of the source of the source of the voices. For example, sometimes I will attribute the ideas being expressed by my voice within my head to my conscious thought, me speaking with my voice, but there is also the case where I hear my voice express an opinion that I was not aware I held: me hearing my voice used by my "unconscious". How are these two processes different within the physical brain? His own main area of study appears to be the case where we hear the voices of others: an admonishing parent for example. By what processes might we form an idea, couch it into another's voice and experience it as if it were coming from that other person?
Although much more seems to be known than I knew; what goes on in our brains and its relation to our minds is grounds for speculation and bafflement. As I expect it will remain for some centuries to come.
I've been tempted to quote the last page in its entirety because it expresses excellently the puzzle of what is thought and, to use a Buddhist phrasing, the question of "Who is my self?" but the book is good enough that it doesn't deserve my short circuiting the author's presentation. If you're interested in your own thinking, I suggest you read it.
Although much more seems to be known than I knew; what goes on in our brains and its relation to our minds is grounds for speculation and bafflement. As I expect it will remain for some centuries to come.
I've been tempted to quote the last page in its entirety because it expresses excellently the puzzle of what is thought and, to use a Buddhist phrasing, the question of "Who is my self?" but the book is good enough that it doesn't deserve my short circuiting the author's presentation. If you're interested in your own thinking, I suggest you read it.
August 23, 2025
This is one of the best popular psychology books I’ve read—and despite of the fact that I think the underlying thesis motivating this book is misguided. To start with what’s impressive: Fernyhough covers a range of different perspectives on the topic of inner speech. The failing of other popular psychology books I’ve encountered is that there is an exclusive focus on findings in experimental psychology or neuroscience, and then brief elaboration on implications in the real world. Fernyhough, in contrast, spends just a few chapters detailing experimental findings. But he is honest about the limitations of the methodologies in experiments testing hypotheses on such delicate and elusive matters as the mind or psyche.
Rightfully so, he spends a good number of chapters on perspectives on the subject matter from Ancient Greek myths, contemporary art and fiction, religious traditions, activist groups, and interviews with specific people. (For example, there is pretty much a whole chapter in literary analysis of a selection of Van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo; as well as a chapter on the medieval female Christian mystics Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich). It is important to focus on the mind from these other perspectives, I think, because the science itself is so limited; these other perspectives can offer insights and data points that can inspire critical reflection on the science, as well as new hypotheses that could be formulated naturalistically or scientifically.
I am not a specialist in any of these areas, so I can’t say for certain that he dealt with the topic of inner speech from these diverse angles in a deeply well-informed way; but as a layperson, I found his writing concise and elegant, and critically-minded and compelling.
To move onto his thesis: Fernyhough argues that the symptom thought of as inserted thoughts as associated with schizophrenia ought to be understood as a special variety of inner speech—which in turn should be understood (drawing upon Vygotsky on scaffolding and childhood development, and Bahktin on dialogue and the horizon of interpretation) as a matter of internalizing the perspectives of other people we’ve been close to. It is compelling that the content of inserted thoughts might be influenced by certain perspectives or worldviews a person has encountered before. But this is far more minimal than Fernyhough’s claim.
Fernyhough thinks that it is concrete other people we’ve interacted with whose perspectives we internalize and so whose voices we can hear. There is no evidence or argument for this. I think a more compelling alternative is that there perspectives we find our thoughts coming from might be from a multiplicity of sources and from complex processes that manipulate or complicate these sources. For example, a thought of mine need not come from my dad or my favorite kindergarten teacher. Rather, it might be influenced from specific moods I’ve been in before, from ideas of types of people out there gained through interacting with strangers on the basis of stereotyping them (rather than actually getting to know them), or even from fictional characters in artwork. This is just a smattering of random examples that come to mind; there are surely sources beyond these. Moreover, we surely have re-combined, manipulated, and synthesized ideas we’ve gained over our lifetimes, such that we shouldn’t think that any particular inner thought must 1:1 correlate with a specific perspective we’ve encountered at a particular moment of time in our past.
This is just a superficial critique so far. I think the deeper issue is found in the very notion of inner speech. Fernyhough assumes that any inner thought that can be modeled as conveying content on a par with how speech conveys propositional content must be a variety of speech itself. There is no reason to think this. It seems that thoughts can be modeled on the basis of Gibsonian affordances or emotions/appraisals (cf. Nico Frijda)—both of these can be modeled as conveyed content akin to propositional content, but they themselves are not propositional in character, and are a far distance away from speech. For example, my thought about what to eat for dinner might amount to some embodied impulse or attraction towards certain possible food items in this world; there is no propositional content here, or any claim that can be assessed for truth or falsity. There is nothing like speech. Only sometimes—perhaps even only rarely relative to all the thoughts we have on a daily basis—do we have inner speech proper, namely, thought that is explicitly linguistic in character and is motivated by similar forces as those that are found in when we communicate with other people.
It is ironic that Fernyhough makes this highly controversial assumption without ever questioning it; it even appears that it doesn’t occur to him that thoughts that can convey content akin to that of speech could be anything other than themselves variety of speech. It is ironic because in other parts of the book, he does an excellent job explaining how we should be critically minded when doing experimental psychology, and he is philosophically nuanced at times (e.g., when he compares the philosophical paradigms in psychology from Watson’s behaviorism to Piaget’s individualistic cognitivism to Vygotsky’s sensitivity to the role of culture and society in an individual’s development).
His making this assumption appears to serve as a blindspot for him. For example, he presents an experimental paradigm of having people be buzzed at random times and asked to write out what was going on in their minds at that time (“Descriptive Experience Sampling”). The experimenter assumed that what was going on in their minds was itself linguistic in character, so that it is appropriate to think that they could offer a (linguistic) description of this mental content that could approach 1:1 matching with what went on in their minds. Fernyhough never critically examines this assumption because it agrees with his own background assumptions. Instead, he only critically examines how this technique is limited because it asks a person to reflect, which itself could introduce new materials to their mind, so the person might never be able to just grasp what was originally there.
But we should criticize assumptions like these: If the mental content were not linguistic in character, but rather was something more like an affordance or an appraisal, it might itself be indeterminate relative to the sentences that a person could write down to capture what went on in their minds, and so it is misguided to think that accuracy and veridicality could be achieved by this method.
Rightfully so, he spends a good number of chapters on perspectives on the subject matter from Ancient Greek myths, contemporary art and fiction, religious traditions, activist groups, and interviews with specific people. (For example, there is pretty much a whole chapter in literary analysis of a selection of Van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo; as well as a chapter on the medieval female Christian mystics Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich). It is important to focus on the mind from these other perspectives, I think, because the science itself is so limited; these other perspectives can offer insights and data points that can inspire critical reflection on the science, as well as new hypotheses that could be formulated naturalistically or scientifically.
I am not a specialist in any of these areas, so I can’t say for certain that he dealt with the topic of inner speech from these diverse angles in a deeply well-informed way; but as a layperson, I found his writing concise and elegant, and critically-minded and compelling.
To move onto his thesis: Fernyhough argues that the symptom thought of as inserted thoughts as associated with schizophrenia ought to be understood as a special variety of inner speech—which in turn should be understood (drawing upon Vygotsky on scaffolding and childhood development, and Bahktin on dialogue and the horizon of interpretation) as a matter of internalizing the perspectives of other people we’ve been close to. It is compelling that the content of inserted thoughts might be influenced by certain perspectives or worldviews a person has encountered before. But this is far more minimal than Fernyhough’s claim.
Fernyhough thinks that it is concrete other people we’ve interacted with whose perspectives we internalize and so whose voices we can hear. There is no evidence or argument for this. I think a more compelling alternative is that there perspectives we find our thoughts coming from might be from a multiplicity of sources and from complex processes that manipulate or complicate these sources. For example, a thought of mine need not come from my dad or my favorite kindergarten teacher. Rather, it might be influenced from specific moods I’ve been in before, from ideas of types of people out there gained through interacting with strangers on the basis of stereotyping them (rather than actually getting to know them), or even from fictional characters in artwork. This is just a smattering of random examples that come to mind; there are surely sources beyond these. Moreover, we surely have re-combined, manipulated, and synthesized ideas we’ve gained over our lifetimes, such that we shouldn’t think that any particular inner thought must 1:1 correlate with a specific perspective we’ve encountered at a particular moment of time in our past.
This is just a superficial critique so far. I think the deeper issue is found in the very notion of inner speech. Fernyhough assumes that any inner thought that can be modeled as conveying content on a par with how speech conveys propositional content must be a variety of speech itself. There is no reason to think this. It seems that thoughts can be modeled on the basis of Gibsonian affordances or emotions/appraisals (cf. Nico Frijda)—both of these can be modeled as conveyed content akin to propositional content, but they themselves are not propositional in character, and are a far distance away from speech. For example, my thought about what to eat for dinner might amount to some embodied impulse or attraction towards certain possible food items in this world; there is no propositional content here, or any claim that can be assessed for truth or falsity. There is nothing like speech. Only sometimes—perhaps even only rarely relative to all the thoughts we have on a daily basis—do we have inner speech proper, namely, thought that is explicitly linguistic in character and is motivated by similar forces as those that are found in when we communicate with other people.
It is ironic that Fernyhough makes this highly controversial assumption without ever questioning it; it even appears that it doesn’t occur to him that thoughts that can convey content akin to that of speech could be anything other than themselves variety of speech. It is ironic because in other parts of the book, he does an excellent job explaining how we should be critically minded when doing experimental psychology, and he is philosophically nuanced at times (e.g., when he compares the philosophical paradigms in psychology from Watson’s behaviorism to Piaget’s individualistic cognitivism to Vygotsky’s sensitivity to the role of culture and society in an individual’s development).
His making this assumption appears to serve as a blindspot for him. For example, he presents an experimental paradigm of having people be buzzed at random times and asked to write out what was going on in their minds at that time (“Descriptive Experience Sampling”). The experimenter assumed that what was going on in their minds was itself linguistic in character, so that it is appropriate to think that they could offer a (linguistic) description of this mental content that could approach 1:1 matching with what went on in their minds. Fernyhough never critically examines this assumption because it agrees with his own background assumptions. Instead, he only critically examines how this technique is limited because it asks a person to reflect, which itself could introduce new materials to their mind, so the person might never be able to just grasp what was originally there.
But we should criticize assumptions like these: If the mental content were not linguistic in character, but rather was something more like an affordance or an appraisal, it might itself be indeterminate relative to the sentences that a person could write down to capture what went on in their minds, and so it is misguided to think that accuracy and veridicality could be achieved by this method.
December 4, 2016
Like most people, I have often struggled to find peace with my my own thoughts and emotions I found Fernyhough's use of philosophical texts along with psychiatric studies to be the most satisfying analysis of this subject I have seen. Understanding the voices we hear in our minds is such a challenging endeavor because it requires both neurological as well as social explanations and in combining the two areas of inquiry one runs the risk of overgeneralizing to the point of meaninglessness. Fernyhough used of his own experience in the field of psychiatry as well as references to the latest research to enlighten the reader on this topic in a readable and memorable book.
August 3, 2016
It's impossible to read this book about our inner voices without thinking about one's own inner voices all the time. I was interested to learn that I'm unusual in having my brain filled with words all the time. There are things I would like to discuss with Fernyhough, and I suspect that's the case for most readers.
August 5, 2016
Any academic elucidating the extraordinariness of ordinary minds, and building bridges between them and psychotic experiences, is to be applauded.
Full review http://shinynewbooks.co.uk/non-fictio...
Full review http://shinynewbooks.co.uk/non-fictio...
January 30, 2017
I don't have enough interest in the details of the experimental science or advances in the neuroscience to sustain enjoyment in the denser chapters but still found most of the book engaging and educational.
February 18, 2021
Wanna learn about inner self-talk? That's the book to start with.
November 21, 2022
This book is one of its kind because it introduces scientific research on inner speech, a varied, nuanced, and slippery subjective experience. The author, Charles Fernyhough, has two research agendas: 1) understand what it is like to have an inner speech, and 2) test his hypothesis that auditory hallucination is normal inner speech going awry.
I feel Fernyhough has genuine interests in his research topic, even though he doesn't write in a heated tone. He discusses empirical data extensively, even for those that work against his theory. He spends two chapters on other researchers' explanations of auditory hallucination. From the angle of being both a researcher and a novel author, he discusses writers' experience of hearing characters' voices. The author's curiosity in inner voices and fair treatment of alternative hypotheses signify the book.
Yet, probably because the science is not there yet, or because my subjective experience of the inner voice is limited, even after reading the book, I am still very confused about the topic. I also don't know how to make of the author's hypothesis about auditory hallucination. The evidence doesn't look hard enough for me, and I don't know how to use it to inspire treatment. (The author did describe more clearly how the hypotheses can help guide the cognitive behavioral therapy in his paper, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...)
I did learn a few interesting points, though:
• Fernyhough frames that inner voices' characteristics along four dimensions: dialogic or not, condensed or not, involving other people or not, and evaluative or not.
• Inner speech can regulate one's action and arousal, direct attention, distance one from themselves, and open oneself to alternative perspectives.
• Fernyhough argues that our inner voice has a social origin: The thinking we do in words share some features of conversation we have with others, which in turn are shaped by interactional styles and social norms of our culture.
• Deaf people, including those that are congenitally deaf, can report "hearing voices" by feeling someone signing to them.
• Fiction writers often report that they are eavesdropping on characters' speeches. Significant examples include Dickens and Woolf.
• Theologists such as St Augustine developed schemes to put the spiritual experience of God into hierarchies. Joan the Arc's voice-hearing was seen to be of the lowliest kind because the voices were perceived through external hearing instead of having a "ghostly" nature of coming from within. Women were defined as having a weak character. As a result, the voices they reported hearing were often regarded coming from the devil instead of from God.
• The novelist David Lodge observed that "90 percent of the time nominally spent 'writing' is actually spent reading—reading yourself…. It is essentially what distinguishes writing from speaking."
Side Notes:
• I suppose Frans De Waal would not be interested in inner voices. See the quote below from Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?:
I feel Fernyhough has genuine interests in his research topic, even though he doesn't write in a heated tone. He discusses empirical data extensively, even for those that work against his theory. He spends two chapters on other researchers' explanations of auditory hallucination. From the angle of being both a researcher and a novel author, he discusses writers' experience of hearing characters' voices. The author's curiosity in inner voices and fair treatment of alternative hypotheses signify the book.
Yet, probably because the science is not there yet, or because my subjective experience of the inner voice is limited, even after reading the book, I am still very confused about the topic. I also don't know how to make of the author's hypothesis about auditory hallucination. The evidence doesn't look hard enough for me, and I don't know how to use it to inspire treatment. (The author did describe more clearly how the hypotheses can help guide the cognitive behavioral therapy in his paper, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...)
I did learn a few interesting points, though:
• Fernyhough frames that inner voices' characteristics along four dimensions: dialogic or not, condensed or not, involving other people or not, and evaluative or not.
• Inner speech can regulate one's action and arousal, direct attention, distance one from themselves, and open oneself to alternative perspectives.
• Fernyhough argues that our inner voice has a social origin: The thinking we do in words share some features of conversation we have with others, which in turn are shaped by interactional styles and social norms of our culture.
• Deaf people, including those that are congenitally deaf, can report "hearing voices" by feeling someone signing to them.
• Fiction writers often report that they are eavesdropping on characters' speeches. Significant examples include Dickens and Woolf.
• Theologists such as St Augustine developed schemes to put the spiritual experience of God into hierarchies. Joan the Arc's voice-hearing was seen to be of the lowliest kind because the voices were perceived through external hearing instead of having a "ghostly" nature of coming from within. Women were defined as having a weak character. As a result, the voices they reported hearing were often regarded coming from the devil instead of from God.
• The novelist David Lodge observed that "90 percent of the time nominally spent 'writing' is actually spent reading—reading yourself…. It is essentially what distinguishes writing from speaking."
Side Notes:
• I suppose Frans De Waal would not be interested in inner voices. See the quote below from Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?:
Now that I think of it, my distrust of language goes even deeper, because I am also unconvinced of its role in the thinking process. I am not sure that I think in words, and I never seem to hear any inner voices. This caused a bit of an embarrassment once at a meeting about the evolution of conscience, when fellow scholars kept referring to an inner voice that tells us what is right and wrong. I am sorry, I said, but I never hear such voices.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 18, 2017
Written by an author with a lot of experience of psychology and related disciplines, this fascinating book covers pretty much everything currently known about voices in our inner mental worlds – which, it turns out, is not very much. The final section of the book in fact is a survey of the considerable amount of work that still needs doing.
Two main theories characterise the book. The first theory is that inner voice is something children acquire as they internalise their normal speaking voice. This, the author suggests, leads to our inner monologue… or, more accurately, our inner dialogues. But as Fernyhough begins to unpick what we think we know about our inner voices he shifts towards a second theory, which is that the phenomenon is far more complex than we realise, involving more than just words and sound. By the end of the book he leans towards the notion that our inner voices (and there are always more than one) are one aspect of more which is internalised: other types of sensory and cognitive perception for instance. Inner voices come with much more baggage than just words.
You would think that a book with this title would focus on schizophrenia and other illnesses, but actually such conditions are a relatively small part of the deal here. That’s not so say the author doesn’t have much insight into the area – he does, and the insights are well worth reading. But so little is known and agreed about how our inner dialogue works there is clearly much more to come.
Fernyhough also touches on how creative people hear, perceive and use inner voices in their work – particularly authors. These sections are short, but fascinating.
A couple of niggles. Even one mention in one sentence of the fact that all human beings have a model of the world inside their head would have greatly helped. The latter chapters of the book, where “whole people” are mentioned as existing in our inner worlds (as indeed they do), would have benefitted from such a statement. It would have helped to put the whole argument of the book into a better perspective. I also think a few mentions of the considerable difference in how introverts and extroverts perceive their inner worlds would have helped. But these are small points, and likely will be addressed as psychologists begin to work with what this excellent author has put forward.
Two main theories characterise the book. The first theory is that inner voice is something children acquire as they internalise their normal speaking voice. This, the author suggests, leads to our inner monologue… or, more accurately, our inner dialogues. But as Fernyhough begins to unpick what we think we know about our inner voices he shifts towards a second theory, which is that the phenomenon is far more complex than we realise, involving more than just words and sound. By the end of the book he leans towards the notion that our inner voices (and there are always more than one) are one aspect of more which is internalised: other types of sensory and cognitive perception for instance. Inner voices come with much more baggage than just words.
You would think that a book with this title would focus on schizophrenia and other illnesses, but actually such conditions are a relatively small part of the deal here. That’s not so say the author doesn’t have much insight into the area – he does, and the insights are well worth reading. But so little is known and agreed about how our inner dialogue works there is clearly much more to come.
Fernyhough also touches on how creative people hear, perceive and use inner voices in their work – particularly authors. These sections are short, but fascinating.
A couple of niggles. Even one mention in one sentence of the fact that all human beings have a model of the world inside their head would have greatly helped. The latter chapters of the book, where “whole people” are mentioned as existing in our inner worlds (as indeed they do), would have benefitted from such a statement. It would have helped to put the whole argument of the book into a better perspective. I also think a few mentions of the considerable difference in how introverts and extroverts perceive their inner worlds would have helped. But these are small points, and likely will be addressed as psychologists begin to work with what this excellent author has put forward.
July 21, 2017
Dr. Charles Fernyhough, a British psychologist stationed at Durham University (where I finished my MLitt and PhD degrees), has written a well-researched study on the relationship between the inner speech activity in which all human beings engage and the voices within our minds that seem to plague people with or without psychological anomalies.
He writes: "Our inner voices can be self-assured, funny, profound, hesitant, or mean; ... We all hear them - and we needn't fear them. Indeed, we cannot live without them, whether to make decisions or to bring a book's characters to life as we read." The book is replete with case studies conducted to understand the complexities of the topic, which I sometimes found confusing and hard to follow, especially for someone not engaged deeply in this field. My takeaway from the study is that every thought process is profoundly complex but it simultaneously defines who we are as human beings. This is a noble thesis.
A personal disappointment with the book is a lack (or at best, a very minimal treatment) of considering the inner voices within our minds as possible ontological entities outside of the immediate thinker. In other words, can these words truly belong to God or a saint or a demon? The last few pages of the book just barely grazes the subject and while admitting that he himself is not religious, it seems Fernyhough disengages himself from this topic and dismisses it simply as personal experience conditioned by faith commitment. He also briefly mentions apophatic prayer but remains disinterested in it. It would have behooved his work tremendously, in my opinion, to perhaps have explored Eastern patristic spirituality and seen the "supernatural" dimension of internal noetic communication within the heart. This is an entire universe that requires fair treatment. But as a scientist, he chooses to stay in his safety corner.
Happy is the day that studies can be longer and more multi-disciplinary, to explore the truly psychosomatic and spiritual nature of man.
He writes: "Our inner voices can be self-assured, funny, profound, hesitant, or mean; ... We all hear them - and we needn't fear them. Indeed, we cannot live without them, whether to make decisions or to bring a book's characters to life as we read." The book is replete with case studies conducted to understand the complexities of the topic, which I sometimes found confusing and hard to follow, especially for someone not engaged deeply in this field. My takeaway from the study is that every thought process is profoundly complex but it simultaneously defines who we are as human beings. This is a noble thesis.
A personal disappointment with the book is a lack (or at best, a very minimal treatment) of considering the inner voices within our minds as possible ontological entities outside of the immediate thinker. In other words, can these words truly belong to God or a saint or a demon? The last few pages of the book just barely grazes the subject and while admitting that he himself is not religious, it seems Fernyhough disengages himself from this topic and dismisses it simply as personal experience conditioned by faith commitment. He also briefly mentions apophatic prayer but remains disinterested in it. It would have behooved his work tremendously, in my opinion, to perhaps have explored Eastern patristic spirituality and seen the "supernatural" dimension of internal noetic communication within the heart. This is an entire universe that requires fair treatment. But as a scientist, he chooses to stay in his safety corner.
Happy is the day that studies can be longer and more multi-disciplinary, to explore the truly psychosomatic and spiritual nature of man.
September 8, 2017
I read a review of this book in the New Yorker soon after I had read Lydia Millet's novel sweet lamb of heaven in which a young mother who hears external voices goes on the run to escape an abusive husband and gets taken in by someone who runs a group for miscellaneous people whose only commonality is that they hear voices. I thought the novelist was making this up; however, it turned out that she wasn't. Apparently there is quite a bit of variation in what kind of talk people have in their heads. Fernyhough is trained as a psychologist, this book is steeped in the vocabulary and methodological of that profession. He quite interested in the dialogic aspects of this kind of thinking, and how it contributes to cognitive development, going back to Vygotsky. Fernyhough is interested in when people attribute their inner voices to an outside source, but he doesn't think it is necessarily a sign that the person is mentally ill. There are now international organizations for "voice hearers" who are not mentally ill and want to remove the stigma. Fernyhough is also interested in how the kinds of inner conversations deaf people have. The book was kind of a catalog of the evidence we have of different kinds of inner voices, who has investigated them, and to what purpose. He has a historical chapter treating the Christian mystics, which I thought was quite nuanced. Fernyhough istrying to sort our various kinds experiences of hearing voices and it moves across several literatures--cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, psychiatry, religion. I thought it worth the read.
November 18, 2018
This became quite a fascinating read, after it started a little dry and a bit repetitive. Certainly by, or before, half way through the book I was quite hooked. I found myself particularly interested in the way that authors interact with their characters via internal(ised) dialogue. It talks of a survey done at the Edinburgh Book Festival a few years ago, in which authors were asked about the forms of which they felt they personally connected/communicated/interacted with the characters they describe in their writing.
There is also mention of a large number of different types of internal vocalisations, including what I regard as earworms (i.e. music being played seemingly in your head), although that particular term wasn't used. It is perhaps a little academic when it comes to the precise terminology but regardless, I managed to follow most of it.
The book was a bit dry and somewhat repetitive early on in the text but as I read on it became more interesting and certainly half way through I was hooked. To me its a fascinating subject area and I found it quite informative. At the end of the book, after the acknowledgements, are quite a lot of notes relating to information contained in each chapter and an index, which is also a plus side. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject area.
There is also mention of a large number of different types of internal vocalisations, including what I regard as earworms (i.e. music being played seemingly in your head), although that particular term wasn't used. It is perhaps a little academic when it comes to the precise terminology but regardless, I managed to follow most of it.
The book was a bit dry and somewhat repetitive early on in the text but as I read on it became more interesting and certainly half way through I was hooked. To me its a fascinating subject area and I found it quite informative. At the end of the book, after the acknowledgements, are quite a lot of notes relating to information contained in each chapter and an index, which is also a plus side. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject area.
December 1, 2018
Reviewed for The Bibliophibian.
Ever heard voices? A surprising number of people have, and this book delves into the way we think and how that influences the phenomenon of hearing voices. He’s careful not to stigmatise people who do hear voices, while still indicating what happens for most people and what’s different for people who do hear voices. I’d always heard the idea that schizophrenics hear voices because they’re actually misattributing their own thought processes, but Fernyhough really goes into the pros and cons of that interpretation, and some other alternative understandings.
It’s not just about schizophrenics, though. A lot of it is about the way the average person thinks. What percentage of the time do you actually think in words? How long does it take you to complete a thought? What language do you think in, if you’re bilingual? The book goes into all those ideas and discusses some interesting experiments that do their best to capture the objective facts from experiences which are subjective by their very definition.
It’s really fascinating stuff, and it helps that it’s super easy to read. I polished it off in no time.
Ever heard voices? A surprising number of people have, and this book delves into the way we think and how that influences the phenomenon of hearing voices. He’s careful not to stigmatise people who do hear voices, while still indicating what happens for most people and what’s different for people who do hear voices. I’d always heard the idea that schizophrenics hear voices because they’re actually misattributing their own thought processes, but Fernyhough really goes into the pros and cons of that interpretation, and some other alternative understandings.
It’s not just about schizophrenics, though. A lot of it is about the way the average person thinks. What percentage of the time do you actually think in words? How long does it take you to complete a thought? What language do you think in, if you’re bilingual? The book goes into all those ideas and discusses some interesting experiments that do their best to capture the objective facts from experiences which are subjective by their very definition.
It’s really fascinating stuff, and it helps that it’s super easy to read. I polished it off in no time.
May 5, 2018
DNF. Second DNF of the year, oops. I stopped halfway. I found it too full of "maybe this, maybe that", too much seeing what he wanted to see in various cases. The part about Van Gogh? This part in particular I found ridiculous and reaaaaallly stretching for a link:
"There's another sense in which van Gogh's letters illustrate Vygotskian views about the ise of language in self-regulation. Vygotsky argued that [...] the speech that accompanies action should, over the course of development, shift its position in time relative to the behavior. [...] some trace of it seems to be there in Vincent's letters. "I am painting a woodland scene" becomes "I am going to paint some potato diggers."
The only part that I found really interesting to me was when he talked about the experiences of Jay, and his coping mechanisms that he had learned from his therapist. But then the author goes off into unprovable theories, citing one study after another that were either inconclusive or had methodological problems (according to the author, not me!).
In any case, this is an interesting topic, but the author was wholly unconvincing.
"There's another sense in which van Gogh's letters illustrate Vygotskian views about the ise of language in self-regulation. Vygotsky argued that [...] the speech that accompanies action should, over the course of development, shift its position in time relative to the behavior. [...] some trace of it seems to be there in Vincent's letters. "I am painting a woodland scene" becomes "I am going to paint some potato diggers."
The only part that I found really interesting to me was when he talked about the experiences of Jay, and his coping mechanisms that he had learned from his therapist. But then the author goes off into unprovable theories, citing one study after another that were either inconclusive or had methodological problems (according to the author, not me!).
In any case, this is an interesting topic, but the author was wholly unconvincing.
December 16, 2018
this is a terrific book that investigates the evolutionary advantages of interior dialogs and also when they surface as the phenomenon of speaking to one self. its seems that interior voices are abbreviated versions of speech, and children use it as a self regulatory device as well as a second opinion and outside observer/instructor. the Author explores Julian Jaynes' idea of the abscence of interior thought in ancient man, as during the time of homer, but also counters Jaynes' theories using the Homeric texts,( although this might also be the qualities of modern interpretations of teh text, who knows, I didnt check the references) . the author then goes into exploring the activation of different parts of teh brain, as as oftern been taught, the interior voices are likely due to the errors in communication between the two hemispheres. I still feel like interior voives are just ways that the unconcious communicates to the concious mind about over-all surrounding happenings that the concious mind is too focused on individual things to pick up.
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