Those Voices in Our Heads

What exactly is an inner monologue (IM)? Let's break the title down: inner, meaning inside; and monologue, meaning solo discussion. So, it's a solo discussion that happens inside— the voice(s) in our heads.

Being internal, it often silently “guides” us, enabling us not only to opt between right and wrong, but also to work through scenarios in our head before we actually give voice to them. The IM is often referred to as a “conscience,” but it is much more than our classical image of a little “Jiminy Cricket” sitting on our shoulders whispering rights and wrongs into our ears. It is a preview filter, of sorts.

Statistics tell us that a startling 30-50% of the population do not have an IM. It's only startling, by the way, from the perspective of people who do have an IM. I can unofficially confirm that range, as I regularly (and very unscientifically) ask each of my classes this question in the beginning of the semester, and generally arrive at the same percentages. But remember— not all IMs are words and/or voices; some IMs are in pictures and movies as well. Just as not everyone thinks the same— differentiated learning— not everyone's IM is expressed the same.

Usually the people who do have it aren’t even aware that there are actually people who do not have it, and typically the people who do not have it aren’t aware that there are
people who do have it. It’s almost comical to see their faces when they realize this for the first time!

Little kids who have an IM often have "imaginary friends" that they speak to and interact with as if there was actually another person in the room. They're not yet aware of the concept of the IM, and therefore cannot distinguish their own inner voice from an external one. Eventually they "grow out" of their imaginary friends, which is usually at the time they become aware— at least informally— of their own IM.

And then there are the adults who never lose their invisible friend, and also have never realized that they even have an IM.  The chemicals in our heads— literally the “wet-ware” of the human CPU, aka the brain— are squirrelly things. Scientists have identified over sixty at present moment; a lot of interaction to potentially hit a snag at some point or another. It's why the old chestnut "Mental Health is Health" holds sacrosanct— if you live your life and have never had a mental health issue of one sort or another, you died too young.

I digress. Out of control chemicals that lead adults to hear voices in their heads, and to not make the connections to their IM, are often labeled as schizophrenic, or as they like to say now, "Psychosis Susceptibility Syndrome," which includes schizophrenia, but also incudes other types of psychoses as well. Fortunately, PSS has become diagnosable and treatable roughly since the 1950s and the development of antipsychotic medications.

The "classic" view of the homeless person walking down the street arguing with themselves— this is the IM gone wild, literally. Back in the 1960s "State Hospitals" (public inpatient mental health hospitals) began a program called "deinstitutionalization," which effectively put a lot of people with psychoses out on the street. Prior to antipsychotic medications, a lot of those adults who were in effect
psychotic were thought to be "possessed" by a spirit or a demon. A whole cottage industry sprung up around that concept, in the medical profession, in religion, and even in Hollywood.

The pre-antipsychotic medication era was a dark time for the psychotic who could not help but to interact with the "voices in their head." It has been said that artistic people— the true creatives— have been self-medicating against this for centuries. A quick spin in history shows us countless examples or writers, musicians, artists, and the like who drank, did drugs, were adrenaline junkies, and/or combinations, up to and including taking their own lives to escape the "voices in their heads."

From alcohol to cocaine to wine to mead to heroin to marijuana to LSD to pills— creative types have been trying it all to silence the voices, literally for years. Or at the very least to control those voices while they pursued various secular jobs and other career paths that did not require the creative spark to flourish. At least, when they could. Some were so possessed by their muses that they couldn't silence then even long enough to work a few hours. Once again history is littered with creative people who were all-but penniless in their lifetimes. Debt was also a recurring theme, and Back in the Day debt meant debtor's prison, which took a bad situation and made it geometrically worse.

In sum, the IM and the role it has had in human history is been an inexorable part and function of the human brain for the past 100,000 years or so, when we were first able to look symbolically at the mundane and see— art.

Do you have an inner monologue? Had any good conversations with it lately?

© Ray Cattie