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Wildness, Mindfulness, and the Phenomenology of Voice-Hearing in Thailand
Julia Cassaniti, Chaiyun Sakulsriprasert, T M Luhrmann
Schizophrenia Bulletin·2025·1 citations
Background and Hypothesis
Research has found that the content and valence of voices heard by persons with schizophrenia appear to be shaped by local culture. We interviewed twenty participants about their voices in Suan Prung Hospital in Chiang Mai, Thailand to see if, and how, there appeared to be such local influences
Study Design
In an ethnographically driven and phenomenological study, we asked participants what their voices said; whether the voices ever told them what to do and if so, what; whether they knew the speakers; whether there were speakers they liked; whether they had hallucinations in other sensory modalities; and other related questions. Interviews lasted between 30 min and 2 h.
Study Results
Much content of these voice-hearing experiences reflected culturally specific themes. Only one person reported hearing violent commands. There were stories about the power of sacred things and powerful lineages, and cosmological stories about the power of nature. In this cultural context where talk about minds is highly elaborated, participants often said that if they had been more mindful, sati, they would not have heard voices. Most strikingly, many persons described their voices as associated with a kind of uncontrolled wildness of nature spirits.
Conclusions
We find that the felt disruption of the self-world boundary appears to be interpreted in Thailand as a kind of literal wildness, best countered by mindfulness. This seems to be an unusually explicit account of phenomenology of ipseity disorder and suggests that ipseity may be understood and experienced differently in different cultural worlds.
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View paper →Self-discrepancy as an important factor in addressing women's emotional reactions to infertility.
K.A. Kikendall
psycnet.apa.org
Researchers have failed to establish infertility as a crisis or to identify an emotional reaction that is common to women who are faced with an inability to conceive. Many women, however, express a desire for counseling in conjunction with infertility treatment. This discrepancy in the research presents confusion for the clinician who is developing psychological interventions while working with infertile women. Infertility is approached in this article as a personal crisis that is based on a conflict between an ideal self as mother or woman and a real self as infertile. E. T. Higgins's (see record 1987-34444-001) self-discrepancy theory is proposed as a model for understanding the variability in the levels of distress and the types of emotional reactions to infertility. Clinical implications are discussed in relation to the variability of emotional reactions in female infertility clients, the selection of assessment techniques, and the selection of intervention techniques. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
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