When Self-Consciousness Breaks: Alien Voices and Inserted Thoughts

212 Pages·2000·0.59 MB·English

by  George Graham

When Self-Consciousness Breaks

When Self-Consciousness Breaks
Alien Voices and Inserted Thoughts
G. Lynn Stephens
George Graham
A Bradford Book
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England

© 2000 Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, record
ing, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing
from the publisher.
Set in Bembo by Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stephens, G. Lynn.
When self-consciousness breaks : alien voices and inserted thoughts
I G. Lynn Stephens, George Graham.
p. em. - (Philosophical psychopathology. Disorders in mind)
"A Bradford book."
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-19437-6 (he: alk.paper)
1. Auditory hallucinations. 2. Thought insertion. 3. Self.
4. Self-perception. I. Graham, George, 1945- II. Series.
RC553.A84 S74 2000
154.4-dc21 00-026 720
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.
-W B. Yeats
Contents
Series Foreword ix
Acknowledgements XI
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Swallowing Candy
1.2 What Is This Book About? 4
1.3 Overview of Main Ideas 7
2 Voice Lessons 13
2.1 Conceiving Voices 13
2.2 What Is Inner Speech? 18
2.3 Mouths Wide Open 20
2.4 Fast Confabulation 26
3 The Auditory-Hallucination Model ofVoices 33
3.1 The Prospect of a Theory 33
3.2 Hallucination and Perception 35
3.3 Reality Discrimination 40
3.4 Going in Circles 44
4 A First Tale of Hoffinan 49
4.1 The Best of the AHM Accounts 49
4.2 A Touch of the Bizarre 51
4.3 The Input Account 57
4.4 The Core of Hoffinan's Account 59
4.5 First Critiques 62
viii Contents
4.6 Cognitive Breakdown and Schizophrenia 66
4.7 Inspecting Nonself Attribution 69
5 A Second Tale of Hoffinan 79
5.1 The Akins-Dennett Regress Objection 79
5.2 Another Regress Objection 85
5.3 Self-Attribution, Introspection, and Attitudes 88
5.4 Discourse Planning, Inner Speech, and the Experience of
Unintendedness 93
5.5 Silent Radios 97
5.6 Reality Testing 106
6 Thought Insertion 117
6.1 Just What the Theorist Ordered 117
6.2 What Is Thought Insertion? 119
6.3 Thought Insertion and Ego-Boundary Confusion 121
6.4 Boundary Confusion and Multiple Personality Disorder 128
6.5 Frith as Motetus 133
7 In the Frankfurt School 145
7.1 Frankfurtian Externality 145
7.2 The Conceptual Problem of Externalization 146
7.3 A Frankfurtian Concept of Alienation 151
8 Alienated Self-Consciousness Explained 15 7
8.1 Framing the Explanation 157
8.2 Explaining Failure of Self-Attribution 158
8.3 Explaining Alienation 172
8.4 Concluding Compulsively 176
Bibliography 185
Index 195