This master dissertation outlines a phenomenon of hearing voices from the perspective of an individual's experience as genuinely real and integrated part of his life. Such conceptualization differs from a medical view, which comprehends this experience as one of symptoms of a mental illness.
The majority of individuals confronting with hearing voices does not use psychiatric services since it depends on whether those voices are supporting or troublesome. Namely, troublesome voices demand for a contending strategies and learning how to live with them. It is also necessary to change relations with these voices and, consequently, the path of recuperation. Frequently, these voices present a part of individual’s life story, which has to be confronted and examined closely. An individual must learn how to live with it. Without active part of a reflexive hearer troublesome voices can be understood merely as a symptom of a mental illness which has to be treated psychologically.
In an empirical part I analyzed six voice hearers considering the context of their life stories. I used a qualitative methodology – the information was collected with the semi-structured interviews and analyzed with the multistage encoding.
Results integrate a theoretical part with an empirical part and emphasize the meaning of interpersonal relations with experience of hearing voices.
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