Multiple Personality Disorders | Functional Auditory Hallucinations

im a fine art photographer currently making a photobook of staged images on the stories of mental illness sufferers. the book is made of up of many different real life cases. a paragraph from each about themselves, someone they know or even a stranger they have seen with the problem. along with sybil, three faces of eve and many others i read 'fractured mind' and became really interested in the story. i am yet to find a multiple personality sufferer or who has experienced it and overcome it that will share a small story or paragraph about their experience as it is so rare. i was wondering if, possibly, you could tell me anything about the amazing journey of robert oxnam that i could use for an image, even a sentence. what you tell me i will then re create into a photograph. staged. i can show you examples of some other cases i have done so far. if you can help, or you know anyone who can. please email me back. thank you for your time.

Thanks for your letter on A Fractured Mind. If you want to make direct contact with Robert Oxnam, we suggest you write to his publisher, Hyperion, and ask that they forward a letter to him.

In addition, you might want to look up psychiatrists and mental health organizations in your area, and ask if they can provide you with any willing volunteers.

--- Ed

Go to the
review
that inspired this letter

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To: lolitalark@yahoo.com

Subject: Sometimes this is functional auditory hallucinations!

I would like to comment on what you have written.

"...you will find that many voice hearers believe that other people/neighbours etc are talking about/persecuting them (and this often leads to violence) --- before they find out that they are hearing voices .... I suspect that certain areas of the brain that register the spatial location from where a sound emanates is activated when people hear voices from a radio or a t.v. I wonder whether people who think that other people are talking about them also hear voices emanating from the spatial location of the other person/persons."

Sometimes this is functional auditory hallucinations!

"In schizophrenia, functional hallucinations are defined as those that occur when a patient simultaneously receives a real stimulus in the perceptual field concerned (e.g., hallucinated voices heard simultaneously with --- and specific to --- the real sound of running water)" In my letter I write about my experience and understanding of the voices I hear:

http://www.freewebs.com/stefan661/

(if this link to my letter doesn't work you can always look in Julian Jaynes Society Forum Index -> Schizophrenia --- My experience and understanding of the voices I hear. )

"...The most insidious symptom that might lead to false beliefs is when verbal illusions defined as functional auditory hallucinations make you believe that you can hear distant voices when all you hear objectively is non verbal sounds of these distant voices. This is why I wanted to simulate the circumstances needed to induce functional auditory hallucinations which was done with the help of a soundfile with a lot of white noise used to mask distant voices talking in the background. (An objective perception was hereby prevented, but still I could hear them talk... and in real life you only need to hear a couple of words to start and fuel false beliefs.)"

--- Stefan Andersson
nemo661@yahoo.se