“What shall I say about this book? Why do I like it?” This, were I to put into words what passed through my mind, was roughly what I said to myself before beginning to write this review. Hovering somewhere in the space between these thoughts, another voice, inaudible to anyone but myself, asked: “How about coffee? Or maybe wine? Yes? No, better stick to coffee.” These words, however, do not quite convey the actual experience, which was altogether a mistier and less definitive one. This kind of inner conversation, though common enough, is not well documented or understood. The psychologist Charles Fernyhough, who became interested in the manifold ways in which we commune with ourselves, decided to investigate the phenomenon and his book, The Voices Within, is the intriguing result of his research.
The book explores a wide range of types of voice, from the everyday, such as my own rather banal example, to the creative and the bizarre. Voices are associated in the popular mind with schizophrenia, but they are also frequent attenders on other psychiatric disorders. During the years I spent working as a psychoanalyst, I became acquainted with many kinds of inner voice: nags, down-putters, savage persecutors, prophets of doom, the siren calls of idleness, the seductive beckonings of recklessness – these and many other soundtracks afflict people who are by no means mad but nonetheless are victims of vocal inner correspondents prejudicial to their health and balance.
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