Fetch Muses, Madmen, And Prophets: Rethinking The History, Science, And Meaning Of Auditory Hallucination Translated By Daniel B. Smith Manuscript

this broad view of the phenomenon of voicehearing which is accompanied by a number of famous case histories Socrates, Joan of Arc, William Blake, but feel it could have been so much more.
It is short on depth and detail, I would have liked to have read about other, less famous, examples, about the variety of theories that both professionals and hearers provide, but most of all I would have liked a more lucid and empathetic account of what it is actually like to hear voices.
The examples provided simply do not do justice to the experience, I feel, or simply do not communicate it well enough, which is ironic, given the subject matter.
That said, reading this book has provided me with the motivation to explore the subject further and to read more widely in the search for a greater approximation of this peculiar human condition.
I've flipped through it and checked the parts listed under Poetry in the index, One thing it suggests is that poetry used to be written more viscerally and is now more of an intellectual act, and that this shift may explain a decrease in satisfaction with much of contemporary poetry.
An arguable point, but one worth considering when one is blandsided by yet another lump of Portentous Hush google Joseph Salemi on that.


An alternately interesting and tedious overview of auditory "hallucinations", I put hallucinations in quotes because the book makes the point that such terminology automatically puts hearing voices into pathology, effectively closing off consideration of it as something spiritual.
For instance, there are some who best adapt to voicehearing not by being drugged into a stupor not to hear them, but by integrating them into their daily life and mindset.
The most interesting chapter for me was Enigmatical Dictation, which discussed the poets William Blake, Theodore Roethke and A.
E. Housman, among others. I probably found it to be the most interesting because it was the chapter I could most identify with personally not because I hear voices, which I don't, but because of what it says about inspiration.
The next most interesting chapters were those which discussed religious and mystical participants in voicehearing, Interspersed throughout the book are Interludes which discuss the author's personal quest of trying to understand the phenomenon of his father's voices.


The most tedious chapter for me was The Tyranny of Meaning which focused on correctly defining voicehearing.
There was more than I cared to know about the minutiae of how the terms have evolved,

Curously, the elephant in the room, the book and movie "A Beautiful Mind" about John Nash, which is probably one of the most recent popular examples of this phenomenon, are not brought up at all.


All in all, an interesting book, though it was slowgoing at times, This is the second book I've finished this week that came into being as the selfreported result of the author's needing to come to terms with his father's experience.
Both books have by turns benefited and suffered from their authors' source of inspiration, In the case of this book, it appears Smith's father had a terrible experience with auditory hallucinations and was tormented by them his entire life.
Not tormented in the sense that he couldn't escape them, they were persecutory, etc, but tormented because he felt they were shameful and a harbinger of coming insanity that threatened to destroy the life he had built.


None of that came to pass, and subsequently Smith discovered his grandfather also heard voices, but had come terms with the experience early in life and found it benign as well as a source of insight.
Apparently, the contradictory experiences of his male ancestors sent Smith in search of the meaning/source/history of voicehearing, to see how seemingly sane individuals understand their experience.


A soundenough starting point, but it disintegrates from there, It left me with the feeling of reading someone's notquitecomplete college thesis, with the historical chapters about Socrates and Joan of Arc standing well on their own, but not really integrated with the rest of the book.
Additionally, the conclusion was a tackedon bit of insignificance, leaving me hanging without the various threads the author traced tied together in any meaningful way.
To paraphrase another reviewer, he basically concludes that some people who hear voices are insane, but not all are, so maybe we shouldn't lump everyone together.
In other words, "give ethereal, inspirational voices a chance",

That said, the individual chapters themselves provide an interesting read and some food for thought, and the writing is quite solid despite the lack of an overall thesis for it to hang on.
This book alternated between fascinating and kinda boring, I think the author lacked focus and direction, and so the book did not have a specific enough purpose to be as good as it could have been.
The strange history of auditory hallucination throughout the ages, and its power to shed light on the mysterious inner source of pure faith and unadulterated inspiration.


Auditory hallucination is one of the most aweinspiring, terrifying, and illunderstood tricks the human psyche is capable of.
Muses, Madmen, and Prophets reevaluates the popular conception of the phenomenon today and through the ages, and reveals the roots of the medical understanding and treatment of it.
It probes history, literature, anthropology, psychology, and neurology to explain and demystify the experience of hearing voices, in a fascinating and at times funny quest for understanding.
Daniel B. Smith's personal experience with the phenomenonhis father heard voices, and it was the great torment and shame of his father's lifeand his discovery that some people learn to live in peace with their voices fuels this contemplative, brilliantly researched, and inspired book.


Science has not been able to fully explain the phenomenon of auditory hallucination, It is a condition that has existed perhaps as long as we havethere is evidence of it in literature and even preliterate oral histories from across all times and cultures.
Smith presents the sophisticated and radical argument that a negative side effect of living as we do in this great age of medical science is that we have come to limit this phenomenon to nothing more than a biochemical glitch for which the only proper response is medical, pharmaceutical treatment.
This "pathological assumption" can inflict great harm on the people who hear voices by ignoring the meaning and reality of the experience for them.
But it also obscures from the rest of us a rich wellspring of knowledge about the essential source of faith and inspiration.


As Smith examines the many incidences of people who have famously heard voices throughout historyMoses, Mohammed, Teresa of Avila, Joan of Arc, Rilke, William Blake, Socrates, and othershe considers the experience of auditory hallucination in light of its relationship to the nature of pure faith and as the key to the source of artistic inspiration.
At the heart of Smith's exploration into the many extraordinary, strange, sometimes frightening and sometimes almost supernatural aspects of auditory hallucination is his driving personal need to comprehend an experience that, when considered in good faith, is as profound and complex as human consciousness itself.
This book gets five only because a book can't be rated with four and a half at goodreads, Muses, Madmen, and Prophets is fascinating, It's well written and seems well researched, The conclusion is not particularly satisfying because auditory hallucinations remain such a mystery, The reader is left to draw the reader's own conclusion, and that's OK, It's a nonfiction book that does not take a linear approach to its subject, It's worth the time it takes to read, Interesting! And validating haha! I lack trust that writers in this vein will respect people's unusual experiences and think beyond

the narrow limits of psychiatry and biochemistry WITHOUT totally glamorizing mental illness and denying its destructive, painful aspects.
So, I'm a little wary, . but intrigued!!!!!!!! It appears the voices I've been hearing all my life aren't that unusual, Oh, I just hear someone calling my name, and to tell the truth it hasn't happened in a while, but it used to be disconcerting.
I mean, you're walking down the street, or, what's worse, standing in an otherwise empty room, you hear your name and turn around, and there's no one there, or no one that you know, anyway.
And not a voice inside your head, the voice comes from the outside, and is very real, Well, something likeof people interviewed have had this type of auditory hallucination at one time or another, This is nothing compared to Joan of Arc, of course, who had an ongoing conversation with a few saints or dear Allen Ginsberg who, after an afternoon of masturbating on his couch, heard William Blake reciting.
Do you understand that Allen was masturbating, not Blake,

What's that

The big understanding for me is that the brain is the locus of everything, Cut your finger and it's the brain that feels the pain, not the finger, It's a good buddhist teaching,

Anyway, considering the title I thought I'd be in for a more tabloid type read, but the author doesn't get too excited, and though not clinical it's not the kind of stuff you just have to share with the guy sitting next to you on the bus.
Well, on my bus, the guy sitting next to me is usually having auditory hallucinations of his own, especially between the King Co.
Jail and the Harborview ER,

This was a moderately interesting read by an author who was trying to understand his father's mental illness, and came to grips with the idea that his father, though batty, should have been treated more kindly.
I couldn't agree more.

Say what


Like sitelinkConsciousness: A Very Short Introduction, this book left me convinced that mind investigating mind is doomed to become lost in recursion and confusion.
In this book, however, the situation may have been improved if the author had established some working definitions early on and stuck with them.


Some interesting passages and observations, some curious facts, but no real substance to speak of, I'm still not really sure of what 'hearing voices' means, or how common it is in the population as a whole.
The subject of whether hearing voices is always pathological or not is very interesting, and in some instances this book was very engaging.
But most of the time reading it was dull and poorly focused, The chapter I enjoyed the most The Tyranny of Meaning, where we actually get to hear about the differing viewpoints within modern psychology, both from professionals and the voice hearers themselves.
And the history of the term "hallucination" and how it shaped the way we view people who hear voices was enlightening.
But I felt the chapters on Socrates and Joan of Arc were unnecessary and didn't mesh well with the rest of the book, they were really besides the point.
And as others have mentioned, the conclusion while I agree with it was weak, The book made use of many other more thorough sources that are probably more useful to readers interested in exploring the issues addressed in this book further.
Auditory hallucination is an inherently interesting topic, so this book was an easy read, However, I wished the author could have organized his flow of ideas better, It was sort of a mishmash of psychology, history and philosophy, which wasn't tied together very well,

And his conclusion/thesis was very lame, He basically ending the book saying to paraphrase, "A handful of hallucinatory people throughout history have been worth listening to, so you should always pay attention to people who appear crazy.
"

But again, the content of the book was still very interesting, and it's definitely worth reading, I HAVE JUST STARTED READING THIS BOOK,
ITS IS ONE OF THE MOST MINDOPENING/ MINDBENDING BOOKS THAT I HAVE EVER READ!

I WOULD LIKE TO DISCUSS THIS BOOK WITH ANYONE WHO HAS READ IT OR WHO IS READING IT.


SHARON This book was fascinating, The talk of how psychiatry came to be and why it began labeling anyone who heard voices as "mentally ill" was very interestingand scary.
While I did really enjoy all the historical evidence of people who heard voices and were not "sick" in any wayespecially SocratesI wish the book had gone into more modern examples, perhaps talked about some other cultures outside the Western Hemisphere that often believe voicehearing to be a normal thing.
An interesting topic to be sure, but Smith's personal anecdotes and references to his father's auditory hallucinations can seem intrusive and unnecessary.
Smith does a fine job, however, of pointing out the contradictions inherent in the speech we often use to describe 'auditory hallucinations.
' The word 'hallucination' is so loaded it seems to already define hearing voices as something false and dangerous, However, many people who have heard voices including many of our ancient heroes/prophets: Moses, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Samuel, the heroes of the Illiad and the Odyssey, etc.
claim to be hearing the voice of God, Are these people visionaries or madmen Who's to say Interesting and difficult questions none of which Smith tries to answer with much certainty.
This book has lots of interesting stuff in it, but I think the "rethinking" in the title is kind of presumptuous.
While he dissents from mainstream, he does so with ideas that aren't very fresh, It's really kind of a dumbed down, padded out version of the first lecture in William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience.


Not as audacious as Jaynes' theories on the subject, this Muses, Madmen, and Prophets's still a good read, which want us to try to adopt a non or less conformist point of view about people who hear voices.
The phenomenon may be a plague in a lot of cases, but it seems there's also many people that copes well with it.
Some paragraphs seem a little superfluous the one describing a personal experience in an isolation tank doesn't really seem to demonstrate anything, others, as the one about the history of pathologization, are really interesting.
.