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Can’t you hear them? The science and significance of hearing voices

McCarthy-Jones perfectly captures in his title the two currents that are cleverly intertwined throughout this very useful work on the subject of voices and those who experience them. The science current offers the latest evidence on neurological, genetic, and psychiatric perspectives, while the significance current explores psychological and lived experience perspectives, with the aim of elucidating the what, how, and why of voice-hearing. The book is partitioned in 47 brief chapters, each with its own clear theme, for example, When the world speaks the genome listens, Only God knows, What have they done to you poor child, and Turning to recovery. Each chapter has its own unique contribution to the book, be it the sharing of a personal story, the summary of the latest research in the field, or the presentation of sophisticated scientific concepts in simple lay language, and these tie together remarkably well, leading the reader on an interesting and informative journey, littered with McCarthy’s special sense of humour, but never detracting from the evidence. McCarthy-Jones turns his attention to questions such as “Why do some people develop voice-hearing after trauma when others do not?”, “Are the disturbances in neurotransmitters associated with voice-hearing in schizophrenia also found in unproblematic voice-hearing?”, and “How can people move from being impaired by voice-hearing to having unproblematic voice-hearing?” And he does a good job of answering these, despite the fact that, by his own admission, our understandings of the neurology, genetics, and psychology of voice-hearing remains elementary. While it is true that there are many pieces of the voice-hearing puzzle that need to be more fully explored and accounted for by science, McCarthy-Jones has done a superb job of gathering the existing available data and making sense of it in a way that is accessible to researchers, clinicians, and lay people. In his concluding remarks, McCarthy-Jones offers some very sensible ideas about what we can do with this information, how we can make changes in our communities and our professional practice, and where he sees the future of the research. This is a little gem of a book, and a must-have for anyone working with, living with, or curious about voices.