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254 p. From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - In flawless condition. - Content: AUDITORY HALLUCINATION is one of the most awe-inspiring, terrifying, and ill-understood tricks of which the human psyche is capable. Muses, Madmen, and Prophets reevaluates the popular conception of this phenomenon today and through the ages, revealing the roots of its medical understanding and treatment. The book probes history, literature, anthropology, psychology, and neurology to explain and demystify the experience of hearing voices, in a fascinating quest for understanding. Daniel B. Smiths personal experience with the phenomenonhis father heard voices, and it was the great torment and shame of his fathers lifeand the authors discovery that some people learn to live in peace with their voices fuel this contemplative, brilliantly researched, and inspired first book. Science has not been able to explain fully the phenomenon of auditory hallucination. It is a condition that has existed perhaps as long as we have; there is evidence of it throughout history and even in preliterate oral epics. Smith presents the sophisticated and radical argument that a negative side effect of living as we do in the age of modern medical science is that we have come to limit this phenomenon to nothing more than a biochemical glitch, for which the only proper response is pharmaceutical treatment. This "pathological assumption- can inflict great harm on the people who hear voices by ignoring the meaning and reality of the experience for them. But it also obscures a rich wellspring of knowledge about the essential source of faith and inspiration. As Smith examines the many instances people who have famously heard voices throuhgout historyMoses, Muhammad, Teresa of Ávila of Arc, Rilke, William Blake, Socrates, and others he considers the experience of auditory hallucination in light of its relationship to the nature of pure faith and as the key to the source of artistic inspiration. In centuries past, he argues, God was the hub of unusual sensory experiences, and piety the standard by which those experiences were measured. Somewhere along the way, however, God and piety were replaced by science and sanity. But there are people, even today, who feel the voice they hear is the voice of God. As one of them describes it: "The universe that we live in screens it out, like a prism refracts light. And so what I hear is almost like prophecy itself. At the heart of Smiths exploration into the many extraordinary, sometimes frightening aspects of auditory hallucination is his driving personal need to comprehend an experience that, when considered in good faith, is as profound and complex as human consciousness itself. DANIEL B. SMITH is a New York-based journalist and author. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Granta, and n+1. ISBN 9781594201103 Sprache: Englisch Gewicht in Gramm: 405 Original half-cloth with dust jacket.
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