Making Sense Of Hearing Voices: A Practical Guide

This magnificent book brings together in one volume all the theory, learning, research, wisdom from practice and practical examples of the revolutionary work of Marius Romme, Sandra Escher and Dirk Corstens into supporting people who hear voices. Challenging the fundamental premises of mainstream psychiatry, Romme, Escher and Corstens have pioneered their approach of 'making sense of voices' since the 1980s. They were the first to listen to and talk with the voices of voice hearers, and to realise that the identities of the voices and what they had to say held huge meaning in the contexts of voice hearers' lives. These were not hallucinations or delusions but phenomena whose words offered clues both to the person's history (frequently of childhood abuse and severe trauma) and how they might be helped to learn to live with their voices and recover. For far too many people, the blunt interventions preferred by mainstream psychiatry - incarceration in psychiatric institutions, loss of independence and long-term reliance on welfare and heavy doses of neuroleptics and tranquillisers - had in fact robbed them of the mental and emotional capacity and external resources they needed to help themselves.

This book explains the history and reports the wealth of research conducted to support this way of working, together with detailed practical advice on how to use the approach with voice hearers. Drawing on the accounts of numerous voice hearers, in addition to the clinical research, this book is the go-to resource for those who hear voices, the people who love and support them and those whose work brings them into contact with voice hearers and who wish to help them find ways to negotiate a positive relationship with their sometimes unwelcome and vociferous companions.

Unlike medication, this approach works, has no distressing side effects, and can enable the person to co-exist with the voices that they find helpful, while others that could be hostile and even seemingly evil, can be managed or even go away. Once heeded, their messages, which could often be attempts to protect the voice hearer, were no longer needed.

Marius Romme is emeritus professor of social psychiatry at Maastricht University and lives in Amsterdam.

Sandra Escher (died 2021) had a PhD in medicine and was a research-journalist.

Dirk Corstens works as a social psychiatrist and psychotherapist in his own private practice.

Marius and Sandra organised many conferences on hearing voices and were the inspiration behind the international hearing voices movement and the World Hearing Voices Congresses. Both conducted research on adults and children who hear voices. They published four books and several articles and gave numerous lectures on hearing voices. Together they developed and delivered training courses for counsellors and voice-hearers in the Netherlands and many other countries.

Dirk has taught courses on Working with Voices with Ron Coleman and Eleanor Longden in the UK, France and Australia, and with Trevor Eyles and Birgitte Bjerregaard in Denmark. He has conducted research on constructs and Talking with Voices and is collaborating in ongoing research on Talking with Voices. He was president of Intervoice for many years, until voice-hearers took over that position. Together with Peter Oud and Gert Haringsma, he set up the Voices Clinic Alkmaar in 2020. With Martijn Kole, Sanna Martha and Heleen Wadman, he delivers Peer-supported Open Dialogue for social networks.