Among people with subclinical psychosis who have a history of developmental trauma, dissociative experiences are common, confusing, and often distressing. These experiences involve detachment and compartmentalization and are linked to emotions, past trauma, and psychotic-like phenomena. The findings underscore the need for better clinical recognition and tailored interventions for this group.
Voice-hearers typically report about four distinct voices, most perceived as male and with negative content. Child-aged voices are significantly less negative than other voices except those perceived as elderly. Variability in voice characteristics is greater between different voices within an individual than between different utterances of the same voice. These findings are inconsistent with cognitive models that attribute voices to misattributed inner speech and better support a dissociation model of voice-hearing. The results suggest that classifying voices by subtype or dimensional methods may be useful, and that clinical assessment should more systematically evaluate the multiplicity of voices.