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5. USING INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS = 69
5.3.1. The role of the voice
The role of the voice is to make the voice hearer pay attention to an inner crisis
or to other problems that are suppressed but participants did not interpret it
in this way when they first began to have voice hearing experiences. The nar¬
ratives about the role of the voice included a change through time in how the
voice was defined initially and how it was defined at the moment of the in¬
terview. At the beginning, some had an impression that
»hearing voices is normal. I found it normal because I knew a lot of people are
hearing voices” (Csaba).
Some participants recognised that this was something different:
„Ihese are thoughts that differ from the average, something that excels from the
others and something not ordinary” (Ivan).
The voice, in almost all cases, was rough, negative, critical, direct, and in one
case the voice gave positive feedback about the person being ill:
»lhe voice was always convincing me, that this is not a disease” (Veronika).
The role of the voice was reassessed over time. In contrast to the initial (mainly
negative) experiences, the voice had a supportive and helper role in the pre¬
sent time. These changes have been largely attributed to the crucial role of the
voice hearer method. In these narratives, the voice is described as positive,
supportive and assisting. This encourages the person to move on, „to get a
new direction” (Ivan), „to a functioning state” (Veronika). To confront and
solve the problems behind the voices requires a hearer to accept and control
the voice itself.
5.3.2. The relationship between the voice and the ‘I’
As voice hearers learn how to handle the voices, the relationship between the
voice and the ‘T changes. As a result, a parallel, peaceful symbiosis develops.
Narrators personalise the voices. According to the literature and previous
IPA studies on the experience of voice hearing (Chin et al., 2009; Paulik, 2012;
Rosen et al., 2015), this personalisation offers an opportunity to analyse the
relationship between the voice and the T as an inter-personal relationship.
Therefore, the analysis focused on how participants related to their voices,
how they made sense of this relationship, and if the relationship changed over