Voices: Are They Dissociative or Psychotic?

Abstract

Auditory hallucinations are widely regarded as symptoms of brain disease treated with medications. In an alternative paradigm, voices are understood as trauma-driven dissociated, disowned, or disavowed aspects of self; the goal is not to suppress them but to integrate them during psychotherapy. Auditory hallucinations are common in dissociative identity disorder, borderline personality disorder, and complex posttraumatic stress disorder and are not specific to psychosis. The features that differentiate psychotic from dissociative voices include the qualities of the voices themselves, as well as other symptoms: for example, compared with dissociative voices, psychotic voices are accompanied by less sociability, more formal thought disorder, more negative symptoms including blunted affect, and more delusions. The author proposes that the psychotherapy of dissociative voices can be indicated trans-diagnostically, including in a subgroup of individuals with diagnoses of schizophrenia. Psychotherapeutic strategies are illustrated with a case example.