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Language Therapy for Schizophrenic Patients with Persistent ‘Voices’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Ralph E. Hoffman  and
Sally L. Satel
Sally L. Satel
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, USA
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Abstract

One of us has hypothesised that the ‘voices' of schizophrenic patients reflect altered preconscious planning of discourse that can produce involuntary ‘inner speech’ as well as incoherent overt speech. Some schizophrenic patients reporting voices do not, however, have disorganised speech. We hypothesise that these ‘counterexample’ patients compensate for impairments of discourse planning by reducing language complexity and relying on highly rehearsed topics. A ‘language therapy’ designed to challenge and enhance novel discourse planning was administered to four such patients; three had significant albeit temporary reductions in the severity of their voices. These clinical findings provide further evidence that alterations of discourse planning may underlie hallucinated voices.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 162 , Issue 6 , June 1993 , pp. 755 - 758
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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