Voices of Reason, Voices of Insanity: Studies of Verbal Hallucinations

Ivan Leudar, Philip Thomas

Brunner-Routledge, £15.99, pp 240 ISBN 0 415 14787 5

Rating:

When I began training in psychiatry in 1982 I was taught that the form of patients' unusual experiences was usually more important than the content when making a psychiatric diagnosis. Despite this, one patient sticks in my mind.

This man had shot himself in the roof of the mouth in an attempt to rid himself of chastising voices which he thought came from the head of his late wife's doctor attached to his shoulder. It seemed to me that the content of these experiences might have been important in determining his behaviour.

Leudar and Thomas would have sympathised with my …