If you require mental health crisis support, please contact your local mental health services, your GP, or telephone 111 or the emergency services.

Home > Explanatory models

Explanatory models

Using models to develop understanding

The way we understand unusual experiences is in part a product of our beliefs about mental health which are shaped by our upbringing, immediate family, wider family, social circles, educational institutions, subcultures, cultures and wider society. Recent research into the topic of explanatory models and insight suggests that there are benefits to individuals appreciating and accepting more than one view of the reasons for their experiences.

Impact

graves.

How we make sense of unusual experiences has a big impact on how well these experiences are integrated into our life narrative and the extent to which they disrupt our day-to-day functioning. Many people will have at least one experience that would be considered unusual, for example seeing or hearing a loved one during bereavement. This may be simple to comprehend and easier to integrate as it is less likely to affect a persons ability to carry out day-to-day activities. 

The more complex the experience is the broader the impact it is likely to have. A person may have a very profound experience that alters the way they view and interpret the people and world around them, for example believing a loved one is planning to harm them. This is probably going to be hard and time consuming to integrate and is considerably more likely to affect a person’s ability to continue with daily life activities.

‘The voices extend into space and fill the room around me, a quiet whisper here and a cackle there. The ambience is jovial as the space becomes filled with music. I pause to consider from whence it came.’ 

Anonymous

Explanatory models

Neuroscience model

We all have an internal mental space which contains our thoughts and internal monologue or dialogue. This mental space is different depending on the person, some people are more visual, others more audible and others are more sensory based, often people experience a mixture of these. As such there may be an internal voice of the self, conversational dialogue (like practicing what you would say to someone and how they might respond), imagery and sensations that appear within the mind.

Typically all of the experiences mentioned above are felt and understood to be coming from the mind or brain of the person experiencing them. When a person is having unusual experiences there is the potential for altered sensing such that additional input is felt. This can be through any of the senses but is most often hearing voices. These voices don’t have the same quality as what is typically associated with and experienced within the mental space; they feel separate to the self and are described as external to the person.

Research suggests that when a person is hearing voices, with the quality mentioned above, the part of the brain that is responsible for hearing is activated as if it were the same as somebody next to the person talking to them.

Equally we all have thoughts that carry a significant amount of salience, or importance, which helps us to identify the relevance of incoming stimuli. This stimulus can be from the external environment or internally within the mind. Although a fleeting thought or impression, for example a bird passing by a window, will not warrant much attention something that is meaningful to us, for example the release date of a film we really want to see, is likely to jump out and demand our attention.

However, this same mechanism, that filters incoming stimuli, can go into overdrive. Things that are otherwise ordinarily not meaningful gain salience within the context of the persons’ current experience, for example someone scratches their head and this jumps out at the person to mean something bad is about to happen. Additionally, the person may misattribute these thoughts, giving more attention to them than is warranted which reinforces that the initial meaning is correct. This reflects altered thinking at a metacognitive level (when we think actively about our thoughts) and a cognitive bias known as jumping to conclusions (when conclusions are reached with limited factual evidence).

This is thought to be the result of neurological differences within the frontal lobes, that interfere with executive functioning, as well as the overproduction of certain neurotransmitters within the brain that causes this feeling of salience from the stimulus.

Video

Paul Fletcher details in the video below how he understands unusual experiences come about, he terms these experiences as psychosis because he works from the neuroscientific perspective. He has an interesting way of understanding why these experiences may happen and seeks to explain his view with some psychological experiments that engage the audience.

If you are unable to watch the embedded video, click the following link – Psychosis, bending reality to see round the corner (YouTube)

(TED.com(opens in a new tab), CC BY-NC-ND 4.0(opens in a new tab))

Video

If you’re interested in understanding more about the theorists behind the neuroscience model that describes perception as a continuous prediction, a controlled hallucination of sorts, the video below with Anil Seth (who describes his theory) is worth watching. Go to How your brain invents itself (TED.com)

(TED.com(opens in a new tab), CC BY-NC-ND 4.0(opens in a new tab))

Trauma model

  • The ICD-11, which is the current diagnostic manual, defines trauma as ‘Exposure to an event or situation of an extremely threatening or horrific nature’.
  • Judith Herman, a psychiatrist with a specialism in traumatic stress, proposed that if typical threat responses (or defence mechanisms), like fight, flight or freeze, can’t be used then the components of these keep occurring well after the event has passed. She also expressed the importance of dealing with the loss and grief associated with the event when trying to heal from it, particularly of the change in self, for example mourning the loss of the prior self.
  • Andrew Moskowitz, a forensic psychologist specialising in trauma, builds on this and defines trauma as ‘an inability to integrate the implications of an event into the existing conceptions of one’s self and the world.’ The emphasis in this is on trauma being a personally, subjectively defined phenomenon within which the meaning of the event to the individual is crucial and that the trauma is located in-between the individual and their world.

'Saying that something is incomprehensible is not an explanation at all, but just an expression of despair when our ordinary ways of comprehending people and situations elude us.'

Heinimaa

The trauma model continued

The trauma model makes a distinction between voice hearing and other unusual sensory experiences. The latter (visual, tactile, gustatory and olfactory) are considered to be flashbacks to an earlier life experience or trauma. In some cases this link is relatively clear, however, the individual may not be able to recognise this because the memory of the traumatic event may not be present whilst the experience is occurring.

Voice hearing is thought to be based in dissociation related to past trauma. That parts of the self are split off during a traumatic event and these parts are then able to interact and communicate with each other. Voice hearing can be a source of distress but it can also be well integrated. It is worth noting that there is no qualitative difference in the experience itself between individuals who hear voices that receive a diagnosis and those who don’t. However, individuals who find them distressing, uncontrollable and separate from the self (foreign and external) are more likely to have been hospitalised and received a diagnosis.

‘One of the most powerful moments for me is when everything clicks into place like a jigsaw puzzle that's coming together. When the synchronicity feels relentless and then peaks in a realisation of knowing exactly what is happening. Afterwards, whether the realisation is good, bad or somewhere in between at least there is a sense of calm.’

Anonymous

A psychological function?

Unusual beliefs are thought to be serving a psychological function, as a way to make sense of something that is happening or has happened. In this way they can provide relief from uncomfortable or distressing feelings or anxieties. This can be for several reasons:

  • To reduce overwhelming affect.
  • To keep traumatic memories out of conscious awareness.
  • As a symbolic expression of actual events.
  • As a way to allow for the experience of denied affect.
  • As a way to express forbidden actions.

Attachment experiences

Another aspect of this is looking at early attachment experiences. If there are disturbances in attachment during the first few months of life these can be stored as emotional or body memories that lack autobiographical context. This lack of a story for the feelings an individual is experiencing can lead to unusual beliefs in the present that appear not to make sense but may do so in the context of unknown early life trauma. In this way the individual may be having a form of memory intrusion but because they are unaware of the memory they assume it must have something to do with the present moment. This may lead to making associations that are difficult for the individual and others to understand.

Other perspectives

However, there are also a number of other ways of making sense of unusual experiences. The following types of perspectives will be explored in more detail in the next few sections of this course:

  • Evolutionary.
  • Philosophical.
  • Spiritual.
  • Influencing factors.

Consider more:

u003c!u002du002d wp:list u002du002du003ernu003cul class=u0022wp-block-listu0022u003eu003c!u002du002d wp:list-item u002du002du003ern tu003cliu003eu003cstrongu003eDid either of the perspectives on this page resonate with you? u003c/strongu003eu003c/liu003ernu003c!u002du002d /wp:list-item u002du002du003e u003c!u002du002d wp:list-item u002du002du003ern tu003cliu003eu003cstrongu003eCan you see how the worldview of the individuals who developed the neuroscience perspective may influence their theory? u003c/strongu003eu003c/liu003ernu003c!u002du002d /wp:list-item u002du002du003e u003c!u002du002d wp:list-item u002du002du003ern tu003cliu003eu003cstrongu003eDo you think your worldview will influence which perspective you are drawn to?u003c/strongu003eu003c/liu003ernu003c!u002du002d /wp:list-item u002du002du003eu003c/ulu003ernu003c!u002du002d /wp:list u002du002du003e