The Sound of Madness | Hacker News Reader

The Sound of Madness

harpers.org

106 pointsfmihaila53 comments

I spent two years living with a man, then my lover, who refused to seek medical help but almost certainly had something like disassociative identity. He had learned to cope with it by giving his voices distinct names, and adopting their personas over times, often in response to external stimuli. As an outside observer with no such symptoms of my own, I found this completely fascinating.

He's very spiritual, one of his inner voices would often come out and sage the house, offer prayers, and perform personal rituals which he kept secret. Otherwise though, I found that his personas largely reflected his current emotional state. One persona would almost always be "out" when he was upset with a friend, or struggling with some stress. Another was more childlike and playful. He described them as always there, and even though he appeared to allow one of them to be "in charge" as he put it, he said the voices were always in the back of his mind, directing his thoughts.

The experience has opened my eyes, and allowed me to see these disorders in a more positive light. I never told him what I thought of his diagnosis and never felt the need; while his condition lent itself to occasional mood swings, he made a point of _respecting_ his voices, allowed them to become a part of him, and I feel had largely learned to cope. He could even switch his behaviors off for a while when needed, usually for work or when he felt the need to be professional.

I don't think medication would have helped, not that he would have taken it. He had figured himself out for better or worse, and I just learned to accept him as he was.

> Otherwise though, I found that his personas largely reflected his current emotional state. One persona would almost always be "out" when he was upset with a friend, or struggling with some stress. Another was more childlike and playful. He described them as always there, and even though he appeared to allow one of them to be "in charge" as he put it, he said the voices were always in the back of his mind, directing his thoughts.

That doesn't sound like a disorder. The abnormal thing about your friend is that he is more aware than the average person.

The illusion of a single, unified self is just that. When you talk to people in your dreams, who are you talking to? Their responses are quite intelligent, if you listen. When you say embarrassing things under anesthesia with no memory of it, who said those things? When you get irrationally angry, who the hell is it that comes out? Same with the alcoholic who swears one day he'll quit and forgets about it the next day -- different people.

Moreover, there are huge areas of your brain that work quietly and subconsciously (from your perspective). Not only are they conscious, they're smarter than you. They prove it through intuition and gut feeling, if you listen.

> while his condition lent itself to occasional mood swings, he made a point of _respecting_ his voices, allowed them to become a part of him, and I feel had largely learned to cope.

I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but I found your tone somewhat condescending. It's not his alternate selves that he needs to "cope" with, but society's notion that something is wrong with him. This might sound too new-age for people, but the more aware you are, the more you realize just how sick everyone else is. We literally have conscious beings imprisoned within us.

> He had figured himself out for better or worse

Probably figured himself out better than the rest of us ever will.

Broca's area is certainly expert in language, but when it runs on its own you get "embarrassing things under anesthesia". The central control of all subsystems is essential for coherent functioning.

Is central control necessary? I know it's a tough pill to swallow, but I encourage you to think about it some more. And don't think in terms of subsystems but rather real entities.

Well considering that a large sub-set of people who hear voices commit suicide and/or kill their relatives in cold blood I would say that yes, central control is necessary.

We commit suicide because our parents, friends, and the community as a whole are trying to forcibly remove something that can never be wiped away, causing anxiety and fear which amplify every negative aspect of the voices/beings/visions. Suicide is never a risk for me when I have someone to talk to who will listen to me and take me seriously. It's a risk when I feel as though my existence is a mistake because almost everyone treats it as such. It's not a mistake. There's a reason why every sz person I know has a very spiritual aspect to their voices. I've accepted it and I listen, and I gain benefit, but most people with such experiences are told there is something inherently wrong with them and that their experiences are artificial. To that I say, it's no more artificial than your reality.

The subsystems, which I perceive in myself, don't have interesting goals (food) or don't have separate goals at all (motion planning). What's the point of thinking of them as real entities? I don't have independently acting models of other people in my mind, only the model of myself.

Well, language generation subsystems sometimes generates ambiguous statements, which can be perceived as condescending or offensive, but I'm weeding that out.

Thanks for this, m8. Never thought I'd see something like this on HN that wasn't downvoted to hell.

I "hear voices" too. They tell me when to eat, they talk me down when I'm upset, they talk me into becoming upset, they tell me what to say in the moment, and many other things. Mostly they are distinguishable-- separate from "me" in ways that I still identify with an "I", but clearly also part of me in ways that I have no identity.

I still struggle a lot with identity because it seems that everyone has one even though I know, theoretically, that's not really the case. Identity is a tool, and it's always seemed to me that other people feel more cohesive than I do-- that they are nimble with the tool and it's natural, or automatic. It feels as though I'm composed of too many moving parts to really call myself one person. For a while there I was trying to find it, but I don't think it's really there. There are "higher" parts of me and "lower" parts of me, and all become relevant at one time or another, and they appear to me when relevant. I think we all get echoes from the past and future, from things that are/were/will be connected to us or are somehow more a part of us-- related to "us" by some common factor-- and so I have been trying to narrow those down. It helps a lot to just listen and to talk back. Maybe ultimately all of these parts culminate to one thing, synchronize in some way on some other level, and on this level here I am working in part to synchronize them. There are some kinks. Obviously the voices/selves/beings are not all in agreement. My ego feels less like a definition and more like a synthesizer now.

Then there is stuff to do in the "real world", and I have to find a way to balance the interests of every consciousness inside me to create something that represents some need, cohesively. And I have to do it all the time.

I probably sound sick to most people, but like you said I don't think I am. I think it's difficult to deal with, definitely, but it's a duty of a kind, and it's a challenge like anything else. There's healing to be done but not in the sense that I want to be free of the duty, but that the duty requires that I heal some parts. I think this is the natural state of things. Thank you for stating your thoughts on this, it's something I don't know how to express or spark in regular conversation so rarely do I get the chance to feel in communion in another way with another human on this.

Good article.

But it doesn't mention the self-talk aka "stream of consciousness" that virtually everyone hears. And a key insight is that it's not our consciousness. It's basically just recordings that get played back on queue. A central aspect of meditation is becoming aware of that voice as something distinct from self.

So anyway, it's best to think "Thanks for sharing :)" and then to do something intentional.

As someone who normally doesn't have the self-talk module running, I was amazed to learn that most people have it running all the time. I only use the module when writing, otherwise my consciousness is normally non-verbal.

I suspect it is related, but when I read I don't hear the words unless I deliberately choose to read the text in my head, otherwise my process is written word -> concept.

Interesting. I hear words when reading but not when thinking -- unless specifically walking myself through an impending dialog or how to compose a written communication.

Cool. I've learned to minimize self-talk. And yes, it helps for writing. But during crises, it's there loud and clear. I used to think that it was what I wanted. And that sometimes didn't turn out so well :(

For reading, it depends on the genre, how well I know the topics, and complexity. I don't hear words in reading fiction. I just experience thoughts, feelings and action. If I'm confused, I need to reread and parse. And English isn't my mother tongue, so sometimes I need to diagram stuff. But if it's familiar stuff, it's words -> concepts.

Even further-leaning on that spectrum, I have an acquaintance with complete Aphantasia.

He lives life with a complete inability to experience anything that is not happening at that moment. He cannot picture his mother's face. He can't recall his life. He can't get a song stuck in his head. He can't hear any words in his head at all.

And yet he's an incredibly talented musician, writer, and teacher. When he sits at his piano, the music just happens. He can only compose while working at the instrument.

"He cannot picture his mother's face."

How common is the ability to picture people's faces in their heads? Is it more close to 60%, 90% or 99% of the population? I'm asking because I also don't have that ability. I think I lose the ability to picture people's faces a couple of seconds after seeing them, while preserving the ability to recognize them if I have seen them often enough.

"He can't recall his life."

What type of recall are you referring to? May I assume that factual recall is still present while visual, auditory and emotional recall is inactive?

I think it's curious how it's so common to have a hard time picturing someone's face in your mind actively, but we can still easily "picture" them in dreams.

Like, we have trouble when trying to accurately recreate an specific image from known data, but it's easy to recall scenes from memories. Which at the same time are so easy to misremember! I feel like I'm really bad at mentally creating still images, but can be easily fooled by mental scenes with movement. Should report as a bug in the issue tracker.

I can reproduce this. You'll get +1 from me on that bug report.

> What type of recall are you referring to?

He can tell you a story about his life, but he can't think about his life. If he's not actively hearing the words of his life story come out of his mouth, he can't think about it.

Some people call this “face blindness,” I knew somebody who identified as face-blind and he explained it caused a lot of social difficulty for him.

Mentioning mostly in case you haven’t heard the term, I guess sharing this info can help so they don’t take it personally.

Isn't face blindness the inability to recognize people? What about the case where you recognize people but you can picture no human face in your head?

Oh, I see, I misunderstood. Thank you for clarifying. That's very interesting! I wonder if these experiences would be have common brain pathways

You might be interested in this (start on page 6): https://www.scribd.com/document/326903960/Feynman-Thinking

According to Feyman's experiment, above, it turns out there are at least two kinds of people, those that can read while counting in their head, and those that can speak.

I always wondered why empirically derived differences in people, such as the above, was never used much in other studies. It seems that it would be a lot more interesting data point than the typical self-evaluation questionnaire that most psychology studies seem to use.

The reason why it is so little studied is it is very hard (near impossible) to get funding to study the difference between people unless these differences cause a problem to the person. No professional scientist can afford to work on questions that can't get funding so whole areas of really interesting research are neglected.

Thanks for the PDF. Here's direct link from another website: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf

It seems to be similar with mental pictures.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi...

"The debate [over mental imagery] was resolved by Francis Galton (...). Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images."

Personally, I'm someone with small-talk module running almost constantly, verbalizing most of my thinking and reading. On the other hand, I have very low capability of forming mental images.

I wonder how many other things in brain are like that, widely differing between people.

I suspect that there is quite a large variation between people, but it has not really been studied because it is almost impossible to get funding to study differences that don't cause a problem to an individual. It is a shame because I find this topic fascinating.

I have a pet theory that more visual thinking is something that has come in from our Neanderthal ancestors. We know they had a brain more specialised around visual processing, but very little beyond this. It is almost certain that some people today think in a similar way to Neanderthals given how much of the Neanderthal genome is still present in the human population, but who they are and what they think like is unknown.

I wonder instead if it comes from early development, like having a preponderance of picture vs written books as a toddler and at what point of development getting read stories has an influence if any

It is possible, but I suspect that any difference is formed earlier than this. I know I thought the way I think long before I learned to read.

I remember very clearly learning about the concept of the written word. Once it clicked suddenly I noticed the whole world was filled with words (not that I knew what most of them meant). The world was now very different to how I saw it before and I became fascinated with knowing what they all were (I used to drive my mother crazy asking her what every sign said).

I am also not sure if this is also related, but I was apparently quite a late talker (around 24 months), but once I started talking I was far ahead of other children of my age.

It comes from practice. You can learn it today - start reading books using an RSVP reader and slowly dial up the speed until you can follow the story without saying the words in your head.

>I have a pet theory that more visual thinking is something that has come in from our Neanderthal ancestors.

That is an interesting proposal. One thing I like about it is its easy testibility. Given how easy it is to find people without Neanderthal DNA, the effort needed to conduct a study on this question would be minimal.

Yes it is very testable, but probably too controversial to be studied in practice.

That's understandable, given how racial differences have so frequently been exaggerated and misused. Especially mental differences. Partly because they're so hard to measure objectively, being so tied with life experience.

And still, being part Neanderthal, I am curious.

Yes it is a shame we can’t study this topic as it is such a interesting area. It would be nice if people understood different doesn’t mean inferior.

The thing many people forget about those of us that are Neanderthal hybrids is that all us hybrids carry different parts of the Neanderthal genome. Pinning down what genes are linked to what phenotypes would be very, very interesting.

Back in the day, I loved The Clan of the Cave Bear and sequels by Jean M. Auel. As I recall, she characterized Neanderthals as having better memories, and more dependent on stored procedures. But I have no clue whether there was any basis for that.

Neanderthal were certainly no less intelligent than their East African cousins, but they were different.

I, too, have a small-talk module running nearly constantly. It is English-based, but sometimes doesn't translate over to actual words.

However, I'm different: I form mental images all the time. I create them too. I might be putting a mountain here or there, all narrating it with my spoken inner monologue. I'm like this when making art (visual art) as well - I narrate the motions, making noises with pen strokes and finishing paint brush strokes with something akin to a sports presenter on the radio.

The combination of these two means I can get a mental image in my head that I've narrated to myself to build it, yet cannot describe it aloud in words without changing thought modes.

I remember having conversations with people when I was younger talking about what language you think in. I found the question confusing, as I just...don't. Words only come in to play when I'm communicating with someone else, like writing this post. Otherwise it is concepts or images.

When discussing this to the others, I have consistently gotten either completely baffled expressions as a reply, or people know exactly what I am talking about, and are equally surprised that it is even something worth mentioning.

What surprises me most out of all of this is how little this seemingly very different cognitive approach appears to affect our day-to-day ability to communicate with one another.

Fwiw: subvocalization isn't inherent. You can practice yourself out of it. In many ways, it's a crutch: it slows down your train of thought and corals those thoughts to those you can verbalize.

I kept waiting for this article to mention Julian Jaynes' hypothesis on the origin of consciousness but it never did. It's super fascinating though!

Essentially, ancient history all the way up to Greece had this feature that people heard voices all the time and it never seemed unusual to anyone. His hypothesis is that maybe written history started before the evolution of what we now call consciousness and we witnessed it in written history.

http://www.julianjaynes.org/julian-jaynes-theory-overview.ph... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)#The_...

Right. Stephenson's Snow Crash riffs on that.

As does Westworld.

> His hypothesis is that maybe written history started before the evolution of what we now call consciousness and we witnessed it in written history.

That seems to fit with The Pharmacratic Inquisition from 2007:

"The Pharmacratic Inquisition is a provocative film from Gnostic Media that makes the argument that virtually all of the mythology, symbolism, and story of Jesus and related Christian traditions relate to two basic subjects: astrology and shamanism. For those unfamiliar with the evidence in support of this claim, this film can be truly eye opening and revolutionary." [1]

As well as The Holy Mushroom: Evidence of Mushrooms in Judeo-Christianity from 2008:

"A critical re-evaluation of the schism between John M. Allegro and R. Gordon Wasson over the theory on the entheogenic origins of Christianity presented in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross" [2]

[1] https://www.gnosticmedia.com/the-pharmacratic-inquisition/

[2] https://www.gnosticmedia.com/the-holy-mushroom-evidence-of-m...

Heh. I had hoped this would turn into a sequel to this article:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...

Unfortunately, it didn't. Still a good read, tho.

That's what I was thinking.

But damn, I've never seen entities talking to me. Except on acid, and sometimes when very stoned. But only with my eyes closed.

LSD (a huge dose of liquid, straight up ego death for 6 hours) and DMT have both allowed me to experience entities and “converse” with them in a manner of speaking. An enjoyable couple of experiences, but I can understand why it’d be scary to experience outside of a psychedelic trip.

Please do not talk of huge dose of liquid when talking of very potent substances such as LSD. A very heavy dose of LSD is about 350µg or 350/1 000 000g. which is such a small quantity that you cannot see it.

One can put 50µg in 1 liter of water and drink a lot of liquid but ingest a light dose while a single drop can contain enough to heavy trip several people.

By that logic you shouldn't talk about a very heavy dose of LSD either, as you wouldn't notice any difference in weight betweeen a good time at a concert and eons of difficult reincarnations...

Due to a dilution error, I did 3000µg once.

The point of mentioning "liquid LSD" (typically in 80% ethanol) is that it was usually the purest available. And easiest to verify purity. It should be colorless. And a sample containing 500µg should leave no visible residue when dried on glass. Common adulterants would be present at much higher concentrations. Unless some jerk added fentanyl or Botulinum toxin :(

The voices are controlling(temporary "possessing") the brain to produce mental speech which is then subvocalized akin to reading a book or more closer analogue: conversing with a tulpa(which talk through this temporary control state).

Remember reading about avatar therapy, interesting to see it only be a recent thing. The article was on how software through constructing 3D faces (using a game engine I believe) was helping schizophrenics and that they were branching into VR research as well.

Yeah, they would build an avatar to represent the persona of a schizophrenic's head-voice and give it a synthesized voice that sounded like what the schizophrenic heard. Then they would puppet the avatar, engaging the patient in dialogue, slowly making it say less and less harmful things, and eventually ceding control to the patient. The patient would come away feeling more in control, and less threatened or coerced by the voices. Fascinating stuff.

The article repeat a few times that people hearing voices often hate them, that voices are harsh and say terrible things but it overlooked that this is only the case in the US and occident meanwhile in Africa the voices are kind and say nice things.

https://news.stanford.edu/2014/07/16/voices-culture-luhrmann...

Surprised no one had mentioned John Nash and A Beautiful Mind. I won't spoil it for anyone that doesn't know the story but it is very reminiscent of the woman in the article.

This was a great article that I’m glad I’m not reading in my early twenties. (For mild hypochondriac fears!)

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