Evolution of Auditory Hallucinations - Daniel Smith

Hallucinations as an automatic signifier of mental illness is a
surprisingly recent paradigm. Traditionally, hearing
non-corporeal voices was viewed as a supernatural event, the
realm of   religious prophets, ecstatic poets, and
inspired painters. In those circumstances, hearing voices was
viewed through the lens of divine inspiration, indicative of an
active relationship with the metaphysical.   Today,
auditory hallucinations are often sensationalized into a
non-normative pathology, a situation where the response to even a
mildest case is often tinged with fear - of violence, of
contagion, of impurity.  In these conditions, the deep,
spiritual significance of the event is devalued, the meaning
erased.   Our guest today, the writer and scholar
Daniel Smith, is here to talk about the ideas in his book –
Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Hearing Voices and The Borders of
Sanity. The book is an exploration of the dual nature of
hallucinations, heavily inspired by the Bicameral Mind Theory of
Julian Jaynes. Centered, also, is Smith's own experience - while
his father lived “terrorized by the thought of what might happen
if he revealed his voices,” his grandfather consulted his for
"picking horses at the track and beating retirees at gin rummy."
  Our conversation with Mr. Smith runs the gamut. We
explore non-normative conscious experience, moral choice,
optimism vs. pessimism, and the prevalence of loneliness in the
modern milieu, and the evolutionary role that auditory
hallucinations might still play.  Audio-only version
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