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Intervoice Congress 2021

The 12th World Hearing Voices Congress, Online, 1 – 3 September 2021.

“Solidarity in Times of Adversity:

The Global Voice Hearing Community Reconnecting”

Congress Theme

Over the past 18 months, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented challenge across the globe, which many of us will have experienced as disconnecting, isolating, frightening, chaotic, overwhelming, and, at times, unbearable. However, the pandemic has also shown the power of solidarity when communities come together to offer each other support in times of adversity.

This year’s Congress will create spaces for voice hearers, family members, carers, practitioners, academics, and all those interested in the principles and values of the International Hearing Voices Movement, to connect and/or reconnect with one another in a post-pandemic world, either in person in Cork, Ireland or online across the globe. Drawing on two ancient Irish traditions, the Congress organisers aim to provide a platform (ardán*) to focus on the ways in which many voices can work together, supporting each other in difficult times (meitheal*).

*Ardán (pronounced ar-dawn) is an Irish word meaning platform, stage, but it is also used in the context of ‘raising one spirits’!

*Meitheal (pronounced meh-hill) is the Irish expression of the ancient and universal appliance of cooperation to social need, referring to the co-operative labour system in Ireland where neighbours help each other in turn with farming work, such as harvesting crops. It establishes community unity through cooperative work and mutually reciprocal support.

Confirmed Speakers:

Jacqui Dillon (UK), will open the Congress, Rai Waddingham (UK), Cindy Marty Hadge (USA), Peter Bullimore (UK), Hearing Voices Network Athens (Greece), Adi Hasanbasic (Czech Republic), Kate Fiske (Australia) – The Listening to Voices Project. 

Congress Format

Congress will have online format. Delegates will be able to access all the keynote presentations, all the online concurrent sessions, and all the networking sessions. See Registration details below.

Registration Details

Click Here to Register via credit card or see below for registration and bank transfer payment option.

Registrants will be able to attend all keynote presentations, online concurrent sessions, all networking sessions, and all online events offered during breaks.

Fees:
Intervoice Day (1 day) and Congress Days (2 Days)

Voice Hearers/Students: Sterling £45.00 or Euro €53.00

Practitioners: Sterling £65.00 or Euro €75.00

For those of you who do not have access to a credit card to buy a ticket for the Congress, you may send your payment via PayPal or bank transfer to the bank account of Harry Gijbels, HVNI Treasurer.

Payment can be made in Euro (€53.00 for voice hearers/students and €75.00 for professionals) or Sterling (£45.00 for voice hearers/students and £65.00 for professionals).

Please make sure you mention Intervoice Congress in the reference line when you transfer the money.

You also need to send an email to Harry Gijbels at h.gijbels@ucc.ie to confirm that you have made the bank transfer and provide Harry with your Complete Name and Email Address. Harry will then forward your email to Onlinevents, who will register you to the event. You will receive an email once they have registered you.

A single bank transfer, covering more places, can also be made, as long as an email to Harry Gijbels clarifies the booking in which all the Complete Names and Email Addresses of applicants are included.

Making a payment in the above way is consent for HVNI to share your name and email address with ONLINEVENTS LTD”

Account details:

Harry GijbelsIBAN: IE72AIBK93012103915016
BIC: AIBKIE2D
ACCOUNT NUMBER: 03915016
NSC: 930121

We hope you can join us. For any more information, please email us on info@hearingvoicesnetworkireland.ie

The Online Congress Venue (Irish Standard Timezone):

Zoom platform, managed and facilitated by Onlinevents

Congress Programme

1 September: Intervoice Day

2 and 3 September: World Hearing Voices Congress

Intervoice Day (1st September)

A day for people involved in the Hearing Voices Movement to come together, share experiences, and hear about new initiatives around the world. The day will consist of speakers, open space discussions about topics decided by attendees and the chance to share what is happening in Hearing Voices Networks across the globe. The Intervoice Day is organised by members of the Intervoice Board.

World Hearing Voices Congress (2nd and 3rd September)

Each day will consist of keynote presentations and concurrent workshops/presentations. We hope to provide opportunities for all time zones to have the opportunity to engage with the Congress.

Film image

BBC Breakfast: Jacqui and Rai talking about Hearing Voices on TV

In the run up to the BBC Horizon show – Why did I go Mad? – Rai Waddingham and I headed up to Media City to appear on BBC Breakfast show. We shared some of our experiences about hearing voices, talking about how they have become part of our lives and how we live with them. We talk about the importance of creating spaces where people can engage with their voices and make sense of them.

Flyer

Jasper Gibson & Jacqui Dillon in conversation at AD4E Festival

For further information and to book tickets please go to:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-disorder-for-everyone-the-online-festival-2021-tickets-137351240257

Jasper Gibson and Jacqui Dillon, In Conversation – Fiction about Psychosis: Impact, ethics, effects

Jasper Gibson and Jacqui Dillon, In conversation.

Fiction about Psychosis: Impact, ethics, effects

Wednesday 19 May 2021, 8pm – 9pm GMT via zoom.

An ISPS Webinar supported by Hearing the Voice, Durham University

To register your place, please go to https://fictionaboutpsychosis.eventbrite.co.uk/ .

Fiction is at the heart of human culture. Now is a perfect moment to ask what we need from it, and our storytellers. – Nathan Filer, Asylum (winter 2020) p 11.

Jasper Gibson’s The Octopus Man is a novel about a man called Tom who hears the voice of the Octopus God, Malamock. It is a novel about surviving what gets called psychosis and surviving society’s response to it. It is a novel about sisters and friends, about psychiatric incarceration and medication, about tests of faith and lines of flight.


What challenges do writers and readers of fiction face when it comes to stories about madness?


Jacqui Dillon – activist, survivor and consultant on The Octopus Man – joins Jasper Gibson to discuss how this novel came into being and to explore some of the questions it poses around ethics and imagination, literary license and personal and political responsibilities.

Jacqui Dillon  is an activist, writer and public speaker and has lectured and published worldwide on trauma, hearing voices, psychosis, dissociation and healing. Jacqui has co-edited 3 books has published numerous articles and papers and is on the editorial board of the journal Psychosis: Psychological, Social and Integrative Approaches. In 2017, Jacqui was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Psychology by the University of East London.

Jasper Gibson was born and bred in Parwich, Ashbourne, Derbyshire. He now lives in East Sussex and is the author of one previous novel, A Bright Moon for Fools. Jasper has been writing professionally for over twenty years for magazines, TV, and online. He is the co-founder of thepoke.co.uk, and co-creator of the satirical chat show ‘Tonight… With Vladimir Putin’.

Their conversation will be introduced by Angela Woods, ISPS Trustee, Associate Professor of Medical Humanities at Durham University and Co-Director of Hearing the Voice.

Film image

Soundcloud Clips from ‘Why Did I Go Mad?’

‘I went from a whole, healthy little girl into a shattered mind’ ~ Abuse as a catalyst to psychosis

Dr Eleanor Longdon ~ Voices can be recruited as part of the healing journey.

Talking with your foe ~ Rai and Dirk explore the power of dialogue with the adversarial voice

Psychiatrist Sir Robin Murray in conversation with Dr David Strange.

Dr David Strange in conversation with Professor Richard Bentall for BBC Horizon

Professor Swaran Singh on the links between social marginalisation and psychosis.

Jacqui Dillon and Rachel Waddingham interviewed by Rachel Burden for BBC Five Live

Trauma & Dissociation Journal

Hearing voices, dissociation, and the self: A functional-analytic perspective

Abstract

In the current article, we review existing models of the etiology of voice hearing. We summarize the argument and evidence that voice hearing is primarily a dissociative process involving critical aspects of self. We propose a complementary perspective on these phenomena that is based on a modern behavioral account of complex behavior known as relational frame theory. This type of approach to voice hearing concerns itself with the functions served for the individual by this voice hearing; the necessary history, such as trauma, that establishes these functions; and the relevant dissociative processes involving self and others. In short, we propose a trauma–dissociation developmental trajectory in which trauma impacts negatively on the development of self through the process of dissociation. Using the relational frame theory concept of relations of perspective taking, our dissociation model purports that trauma gives rise to more coordination than distinction relations between self and others, thus weakening an individual’s sense of a distinct self. Voice hearing experiences, therefore, reflect an individual’s perceptions of self and others and may indicate impairments in the natural psychological boundaries between these critical related concepts. One clinical implication suggested by this model is that therapeutic intervention should understand the behaviors associated with a sense of self that is fragile and threatened by others. Relations with self and others should be a key focus of therapy as well as interventions designed to enhance a coherent distinct sense of self.

Authors: C. McEnteggart , Y.Barnes-Holmes, J. Dillon, J. Egger & J.Oliver

Published in: Journal of Trauma and Dissociation

Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Date: 8th January 2016

Link: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15299732.2016.1241851?journalCode=wjtd20

Voices in the dark: Mosaic Science Podcast

Taken from the Mosaic Science Podcast podcast site: https://mosaicscience.com/story/hearing-voices

This documentary is also available on the Mosaic podcast through iTunes, RSS, SoundCloud and wherever good podcasts are found.

We all have an inner voice. But for some, hearing voices can be much more distinct and unusual.

Adam has a voice with a unique name and identity. Jacqui hears hundreds of different voices. Dolly’s voices led her to believe she was Jesus. The voices John experienced drove him to the edge.

Voice hearing is often understood to be a symptom of mental illness, but many voice hearers refute this diagnosis, believing the voices they hear are based on significant events that have shaped their lives.

Through their stories we explore what it means to hear voices and discover how the phenomenon is being understood, from medieval tales of demonic visions to childhood language cognition, a Dutch psychiatrist helping voice hearers find meaning in their voices, and a pioneering ‘avatar’ therapy using computer technology.

Sanity, Madness and the Family

Sanity, Madness and the Family – Audio Clip

If you’d like to hear my talk at this event, check out: http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2015/04/sanity-madness-and-the-family-family-life-an-urgent-retrospective/

Details on the event:

Sanity, Madness and the FamilyIt is just over 50 years since the publication of Sanity, Madness and the Family, R.D. Laing’s and Aaron Esterson’s groundbreaking study of ‘schizophrenia’ in 11 young women. Birkbeck Research in Aesthetics of Kinship and Community (BRAKC) and the Birkbeck Guilt Working Group have organized a one-day symposium to discuss the lasting impact of that book.

Do people still read it? Why is it almost never referred to in psychotherapy trainings in this country? How have the ideas it introduced been either absorbed into or rejected by clinical, academic and more general discourses about the family and mental/emotional illness?

Andrew Asibong, co-director of BRAKC, will facilitate the event, and participants will include Jacqui Dillon, Robbie Duschinsky, Suman Fernando, Amber Jacobs, Oliver James, Lucy Johnstone, Chris Oakley, Lynne Segal and Anthony Stadlen.