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chrisjp's review
5.0
Sometimes you read a book that changes how you view or understand the world. This is one of those books.
I actually picked this up assuming it was mostly focused on schizophrenia and the associated voice hearing, and while it does touch on that topic in some depth, The Voices Within is actually about how we all 'hear' voices - our internal dialogue.
Charles Fernyhough details the development of how we understand language - internal and external - and how this effects how we understand the world around us and interact with it.
'Thinking' as 'talking' or 'hearing' isn't something I'd thought about before but it's definitely something I think about a lot now.
I actually picked this up assuming it was mostly focused on schizophrenia and the associated voice hearing, and while it does touch on that topic in some depth, The Voices Within is actually about how we all 'hear' voices - our internal dialogue.
Charles Fernyhough details the development of how we understand language - internal and external - and how this effects how we understand the world around us and interact with it.
'Thinking' as 'talking' or 'hearing' isn't something I'd thought about before but it's definitely something I think about a lot now.
fusaroli's review
2.0
interesting line of research, but the book was too tentative a mix of literary aspirations and science communication
fankle's review
3.0
I don't have enough interest in the details of the experimental science or advances in the neuroscience to sustain enjoyment in the denser chapters but still found most of the book engaging and educational.
richardmtl's review
2.0
DNF. Second DNF of the year, oops. I stopped halfway. I found it too full of "maybe this, maybe that", too much seeing what he wanted to see in various cases. The part about Van Gogh? This part in particular I found ridiculous and reaaaaallly stretching for a link:
"There's another sense in which van Gogh's letters illustrate Vygotskian views about the ise of language in self-regulation. Vygotsky argued that [...] the speech that accompanies action should, over the course of development, shift its position in time relative to the behavior. [...] some trace of it seems to be there in Vincent's letters. "I am painting a woodland scene" becomes "I am going to paint some potato diggers."
The only part that I found really interesting to me was when he talked about the experiences of Jay, and his coping mechanisms that he had learned from his therapist. But then the author goes off into unprovable theories, citing one study after another that were either inconclusive or had methodological problems (according to the author, not me!).
In any case, this is an interesting topic, but the author was wholly unconvincing.
"There's another sense in which van Gogh's letters illustrate Vygotskian views about the ise of language in self-regulation. Vygotsky argued that [...] the speech that accompanies action should, over the course of development, shift its position in time relative to the behavior. [...] some trace of it seems to be there in Vincent's letters. "I am painting a woodland scene" becomes "I am going to paint some potato diggers."
The only part that I found really interesting to me was when he talked about the experiences of Jay, and his coping mechanisms that he had learned from his therapist. But then the author goes off into unprovable theories, citing one study after another that were either inconclusive or had methodological problems (according to the author, not me!).
In any case, this is an interesting topic, but the author was wholly unconvincing.
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