Project Inspire Seminar – Tanya M. Luhrmann, Ph.D.

"Voices"

Tanya Marie Luhrmann, Ph.D.
Albert Ray Lang Professor
Department of Anthropology
Stanford University – School of Humanities and Sciences

In-Person Event
Haines Hall352

For more information, please contact Courtney Nelson at cnelson98@g.ucla.edu.

==========

Abstract: They are strange experiences?a voice whispered in the wind, a god who speaks from onhigh?but far more commonthan we think. At the beginning of most great religions lies a voice.Who hears such voices? I have spoken to hundreds of people, in many countries,who haveheard voices, some only once, some more often. Most of these people are not psychiatrically ill.Some are. In this talk I will discuss what we know about the difference between mad voices andsane voices, and the evidence that the way we think about voices changes our experience ofthem?andmay soften the impact of psychosis. Most fundamentally, I will argue thatvoicesteach us something about consciousness: about how we humans feel ourthoughts, about ourcontradictory intuitions about our own thoughts, and how these contradictions?and the waythey are elaborated or ignored by localculture?lie at the heart of the voice experience.