[The collective modes of ordering of the voice-hearing experience].

OBJECTIVE

The article examines how voice-hearing as an (in)direct experience can become a subject of ethnographic observation.

METHODS

An ethnographic participant observation was conducted over a five-month period of time in two "Trialogue" self-help groups organized by the "Netzwerk Stimmenhören", an NGO based in Berlin, Germany. Additionally, feedback interviews were held within the groups.

RESULTS

Four different collective modes of ordering of voice-hearing are captured: Within the groups the phenomenon was at times (1) normalized in the mode of normalization, structured in the mode of voice-hearing (2) as a passion, (3) as a turn of fate or (4) as a disability.

CONCLUSIONS

Psychiatric-social anthropological cooperative research projects may help to achieve and support a change of perspectives for actors working in the psychiatry, actors in psychiatric self-help organizations and individuals who hear voices. Due to the applied methods results may not only be of interest within field of scientific discourse and furthermore create a different insight into the field.