ABSTRACT
The Hearing Voices Network owes its existence to the power of television. One day in 1986, viewers in the Netherlands who tuned in to a popular TV talk show found an unusual pair of guests, a soft-spoken psychiatrist named Marius Romme and his patient, Patsy Hage. When Patsy first entered treatment, Romme says that he took the standard psychiatric view, seeing her hallucinations as the symptom of an underlying psychosis. Romme had read a book called The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, in which Princeton psychologist Julian Jaynes made the provocative claim that in an earlier period of human history, everyone heard voices. In October 1987, Romme and Sandra Escher hosted the world conference in Utrecht. For the first time in history, 250 people who hear voices met together, along with about 50 family members, nurses, and mental health professionals.
