The Voices in All Our Heads
Charles Fernyhough

• Friday 9 June 2017, 1.00PM to 2pm
• Free admission
  Booking required
  Book tickets
• De Grey Lecture Theatre, York St John University, Lord Mayor's Walk, YO31 7EX (map)
• Wheelchair accessible

Event details

Psychologist and award-winning writer, Charles Fernyhough tells a story of things in our minds. He explores the inner voice and dialogue in all our heads, and how this may help us understand how and why some people hear voices.

Charles’ talk is a story of the things that we think. As you read this, you might recognise an internal voice that talks you though what is written. It’s quite normal and it doesn’t upset you. It might also be there when you remind yourself what you need to do, and what you think about things.

Many psychologists think that those who hear voices have lost the ability to connect themselves with this voice so they think it doesn’t belong to them. This can become distressing.

In order to understand voice hearing, we therefore need to understand more deeply how we talk to ourselves – our internal dialogue - in terms of why we do it and how it works.

Charles will review some of the recent findings on voice hearing and inner speech and explore the implications of these. He will discuss this in relation to the contrast between how common this inner speech is, but how hearing voices is seen as atypical. He will also talk about why it can be valuable to understand some forms of voice hearing as inner speech, as well as how this interacts with memory.

About the speaker

Dr Charles Fernyhough is a psychologist and award-winning writer. He is Chair in Psychology at Durham University, having gained a first degree in Natural Sciences, followed by a PhD in Developmental Psychology from Queens’ College, Cambridge. Charles is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society.

In addition to numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals, Charles has also written a selection of fiction and popular non-fiction books. His awards include a Time to Write Award from the Northern Writers’ Awards and an Arts Council of England Grant for the Arts.

He has taught creative writing, with a particular focus on psychological processes in reading and writing, in a variety of contexts around the UK, including a short course on Creative Writing and Psychology at Newcastle University.