Household Ghosts and Personified Presences
Peter J. Garratt
September 8, 2022 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192898388.003.0018 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Variety cybernetics Crowding Window computing Psychoanalysis Aesthetics Literature Cognitive psychology |
| Key points | Argues that voices in psychosis and fictional ghostly voices are culturally informed encounters with otherness, ranging from crowding and clamour to silent intimations of presence. |
Abstract
Abstract Voices in psychosis and fictional voices can open a window on how we understand ghostly presences, whether as intimations of otherness or richly personified companions—what Charles Dickens simply calls ‘that someone else’ in his celebrated ghost story ‘The Signalman’ (1866). That ‘someone else’ might involve a multifaceted sense of otherness, as the Voices in Psychosis interviews suggest: a crowding and clamour, a whispering, or even a silent intimation of presence. The complexity of earlier attitudes towards ghosts—and the variety in Dickens’s imaginative use of voices—highlights how deeply culturally informed, and even strangely hospitable, this encounter can be.