Hearing Voices...

[ithinkjesusiscool]

Pax!

These are two very interesting videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmMyXwMAqiQ

full video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUIQtmWTNW0

What do you as Catholic think about it?

 

[beatitude]

Ithinkjesusiscool,

 

I am always a little wary of replying to these threads of yours on mental health, because you usually seem to be trying to work out whether Catholics feel that mental distress is sinful in some way, and so I'm concerned that with this topic you are trying to ask whether there is anything demonic about voice-hearing. Please correct me if I'm wrong. It's just that your interest in this whole area does strike me as being more than a little anxiety-driven.

[Tufsoles]

Ditto on what beatitude said. I am adding this: I don't think "hearing voices" as in a mental health setting is not sinful. However, Hearing voices in a physic/medium setting is questionable.

 

[EmilyAnn]

The questions and concerns you have about mental health are things you need to be raising with a professional, not with strangers on the internet. 

[Eowyn]

The questions and concerns you have about mental health are things you need to be raising with a professional, not with strangers on the internet. 

 

 

This, this, this.  Catholic Charities is often a good place to start.

[Gabriela]

I definitely missed something...

[Gabriela]

My entire thesis was based upon psycho-anthropological literature that explores people's experience of "hearing God" (though it isn't always an audible voice). I don't see how one could construe religious experience as sinful, though the "faking" (or unintentional self-deception) that sometimes goes along with this phenomenon is often an outgrowth of pride, attention-seeking, self-love, insecurity, spiritual envy, and other such sinful tendencies.

 

Even so, it's pretty hard (impossible, IMO) for an objective third-party to judge for sure whether a person has or has not heard (or otherwise experienced) God. In fact, IMO (again), attempting to judge another's experience as either being from God or not being from God is usually more sinful than the person who had the experience announcing it to another. Because who are we to judge? Unless the announcement of what I call "DDCs" (direct divine communications) is harmful to others or incites spiritual envy in others, or unless the announcer insists that it was meant for public consumption and not as a personal revelation, then I don't think it's our business to judge the experience or the announcer. Leave that to the Church, the person's SD/confessor, etc.

 

If you are interested in the phenomenon of "hearing voices", ITJIC, then I suggest that you read Luhrmann's book "When God Talks Back." It's the largest volume on the subject out today, and it's pretty thorough. Her theory about how people come to hear God does not hold water (you have to dig deep into it to see its incoherence, but I assure you it is incoherent), but she makes some interesting points and her research is certainly extensive. She's not a believer herself, and though she clearly tries very hard to be objective, she does let fall an occasional condescending or snide remark. That being said, it's the closest thing you're going to get to thorough coverage on this subject, at least from an empirical vantage point. If you want a spiritual viewpoint on the issue, read St. Theresa of Avila's Interior Castle or St. John of the Cross' Ascent to Mount Carmel—though take the latter with a grain of salt, as St. John dismisses every single sort of extraordinary experience but one as potentially of the devil. Luhrmann's research participants are the opposite extreme from St. John: Protestant evangelicals, some of whom seem to think they have God on speed dial. Reading that book while I interviewed a bunch of nuns about their experiences of DDC is what forced me to develop my thoughts on how much we can judge of such experiences when they happen to other people. When they happen to us, it is an entirely different matter.

Edited July 9, 2013 by curiousing

[CatherineM]

When my husband gets over tired and starts thinking the TV is talking to him, I make him turn it off and go to bed. He stays on his medication so that when he hears God talking to him, he recognizes that is a symptom of his schizophrenia and not a demon or a sin.

[Gabriela]

When my husband gets over tired and starts thinking the TV is talking to him, I make him turn it off and go to bed. He stays on his medication so that when he hears God talking to him, he recognizes that is a symptom of his schizophrenia and not a demon or a sin.

 

This is interesting, because all of the research I used compared hearing God to the experience of schizophrenic hallucination. It's hard to detangle the two on a sensory level. On an epistemological level, it's quite different. But that's hard to show in a single individual, because so few people have both had a direct communication from God AND had a schizophrenic hallucination.

 

It's probably too personal, but if your husband has had both and is willing to share his experience of the differences—i.e., "how he knew" any given experience was one and not the other—I would be SUPER interested. :-)

[ithinkjesusiscool]

Do I create strange threads? Yes, and that's the only way for Mr Hank.

anyway, this thread is not about diagnosing me...

 

How does the Church distinguish between just hearing voices and hearing God's voice (like the saint in the video)?

[Gabriela]

Do I create strange threads? Yes, and that's the only way for Mr Hank.

anyway, this thread is not about diagnosing me...

 

How does the Church distinguish between just hearing voices and hearing God's voice (like the saint in the video)?

 

I asked my SD (89-year-old Hungarian monk) this very question just last week, because I wanted to start a new project comparing Vatican-vetted locutions with all the stuff people post on the web. He said that the process is not fixed and it's not public. Each case is handled independently.

 

That's all I can tell ya'. I do wish I knew more. As it is, I can't do this project without access to Vatican vetting procedures... but apparently, there are none.

[Dr. Bombay]

How do the makers of the video think it is even possible to diagnose schizophrenia over the mists of centuries?  It's absurd.  It's like the Jesus Seminar folks dismissing every demonic possession in the Gospels as a medical condition. Secularists will always have a handy excuse to dismiss the miraculous because it is not part of their worldview.  They don't understand faith, either as a lived experience or even as an abstract concept. 

 

 

Private revelations are under the purview of the local ordinary unless the Holy See steps in, which they are loathe to do.  If one were researching the topic, one's local chancery would be the place to start.

[CatherineM]

This is interesting, because all of the research I used compared hearing God to the experience of schizophrenic hallucination. It's hard to detangle the two on a sensory level. On an epistemological level, it's quite different. But that's hard to show in a single individual, because so few people have both had a direct communication from God AND had a schizophrenic hallucination.

It's probably too personal, but if your husband has had both and is willing to share his experience of the differences—i.e., "how he knew" any given experience was one and not the other—I would be SUPER interested. :-)

He assumes that it isn't God talking to him. He doesn't think he's important enough and can't really take the chance.

[Gabriela]

He assumes that it isn't God talking to him. He doesn't think he's important enough and can't really take the chance.

 

That's interesting, because Luhrmann had one research participant who had had schizophrenic hallucinations years back, and was now an evangelical Protestant. He said that the difference was that the hallucinations were disturbing, nagging, unsettling, while the "voice of God" (I don't know if he actually heard a "voice") was peaceful, calm, and gentle. The former made him fearful and angry, while the latter made him feel joyful and loved. The former "usurped his will", compelling him to do things, while the latter never did (though it did sometimes urge him to do a good thing).

 

That's the distinction he made, anyway.

[CatherineM]

We give speeches about mental illnesses. For speeches longer than an hour, we often play a recording of what the voices sound like. When we did this for seminarians we had them do a reading comprehension test. A fifth grade one where you read a small paragraph and answer a few questions. They couldn't do it. A couple of Filipino seminarians looked like they were going to throw up or run screaming from the room.

Great way to get people to pay attention to the rest of the speech and come up with interesting questions.