UnSound

A gripping and deeply moving memoir by a lifelong voice hearer that explores the boundary between the imagined and the real, challenging the way we think about mental health treatment and our very understanding of consciousness.

At eighteen, after her beloved brother’s death, which she described so poignantly in her award-winning memoir Name All the Animals, Alison Smith began hearing voices. Not the voice of God, as her deeply religious father regularly heard, but a buzzing presence that seemed to arrive from somewhere beyond her consciousness. The buzzing eventually evolved into full-fledged voices, entities that spoke to her and existed both separately and as a part of her. When a concerned college classmate brought Alison to the attention of the school psychologist, she was immediately institutionalized. Over the years there were many more hospitalizations, shifting diagnoses, powerful medications, and, always, the inner voices that served at once as sources of inspiration and comfort and as her most grueling tormentors.

In UnSound, Smith draws from her own experience as well as those of other voice hearers. She looks at voice hearing from historical, social, religious, and medical angles, challenging some of our deepest assumptions about sanity, illness, and the nature of the mind. Why are some people who hear voices labeled psychotic while others are celebrated as prophets, artists, or geniuses? Why do psychiatric diagnoses remain so uncertain, even as they profoundly affect patients’ lives? And what if the boundary between imagination, inspiration, trauma, spirituality, and mental illness is far less fixed than we have been led to believe?

UnSound takes readers on a remarkable journey in uncharted territory, questioning our assumptions and offering a powerful new perspective on one of humanity's most misunderstood experiences.