Come join us for a Hearing Voices NYC General Interest Meeting! General Interest Meetings are different from our Support Groups. They are a place for anyone interested in the Hearing Voices Movement to come & hang out. We welcome voice-hearers, family/friends, clinicans, activists, allies, etc.
What to expect? :
A simple circle of chairs & group diaglogue about voice-hearing and building up the HVN community in NYC. All welcome.
Starting August 1st, we will be offering a free creative arts therapy workshop to individuals hearing voices, seeing visions, and having other experiences often referred to as “psychosis”.
The group will incorporate drama, movement, art and music as ways to externalize and concretize phenomena often difficult to put into words.
There are few free services of this nature available, and we are hoping to reach folks who might not otherwise have the chance to explore their voice hearing experiences creatively.
THEY HEARD VOICES is documentary film exploring the Hearing Voices Movement, chronic psychosis and the schizophrenia label. The film is a series of wide-ranging interviews with voice hearers, medical historians, anthropologists and psychiatrists from Britain and America, presenting different people’s views.
Panel with audience Q & A will follow featuring members of ISPS-US & Hearing Voices NYC:
Matt Estrada, Tami Gatta, & Peri Zarella
In celebration of Worldwide Creative Maladjustment Week
(July 7-14)
When: July 13th 2017
Where: Jefferson Market Library 425 Ave of the Americas (6th ave & 10th Street)
Cost: FREE
ISPS is international organization dedicated to development and promotion of social and psychological approaches to experiences that get called “psychosis”.
ISPS-US is the North American Chapter of ISPS and is active organizing events in North America, members include professionals of all stripes including: psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, OTs, therapist and a whole bunch of others; as well as experts by experience, family members and carers – everyone. You can join too. Membership of the ISPS-US automatically includes membership to ISPS international, so you get the best of both. ISPS-US holds annual conferences , this year’s conference is in Portland, October 2017. ISPS hold international conferences biannually – next one is in Liverpool.
A huge thanks to Jacqui Dillon for coming to speak to our community yesterday at Jefferson Market Library. Over 50 people attended the full-day workshop which focused on the history, ethos, and group format of the Hearing Voices Movement.
Jacqui mentioned some important resources during her talk, including:
Eleanor Longden’s TED talk : Longden tells the moving tale of her years-long journey back to mental health, and makes the case that it was through learning to listen to her voices that she was able to survive.
Tanya Luhrmann’s article on how culture influences the voice-hearing experience. Including the differences across the US, Indian & Africa
The Mysterious Skin : A Gregg Araki movie. Plot: Brian Lackey is determined to discover what happened during an amnesia blackout when he was eight years old, and then later woke with a bloody nose. He believes he was abducted by aliens, and N. McCormick, a fellow player on Brian’s childhood baseball team, may be the key as to exactly what happened that night. As Brian searches for the truth and tries to track him down, Neil McCormick takes up hustling and moves to New York, in attempts to forget childhood memories that haunt him. Together, the two of them uncover the terrible truth of the scars they share.
The Hearing Voices USA Charter: “Above all else, what defines a group as an HVN-USA Member is whether or not they operate in a way that is consistent with HVN values and approach. This Charter, adapted from the hard work and careful thought of many individuals connected with HVN England, identifies the qualities that define both affiliated and full group membership within HVN-USA. Only groups that clearly state that they follow the terms of this Charter will be listed on this site or considered to be HVN-USA members.”
The Self Reflection Tool used for people to establish their readiness to facilitate or co-facilitate a Hearing Voices group. This can be used when formal training is not available.
Our follow-up event is happening soon:
Dinner with Matt & Peri! **Limited Seating**
RSVP: mariehansen [at] me [dot] com
Matt & Peri are going to talk about their experiences running a Hearing Voices group in a community setting (Max Caffe!)
and can answer any questions people have about starting groups. If you are a current or past facilitator, consider coming to help
teach new people about how to run groups. If you are a new facilitator, come by to learn from current facilitators.
Chill, laid-back discussion & community gathering
Wednesday 6/14 6:30-8pm
**You must order food if you come we want Max Cafe to keep liking us**
Location: Max Caffe: 1262 Amsterdam Ave New York, NY 10027
Jacqui will be returning to New York on October 19th 2017– Stay tuned! In the meantime, Hearing Voices NYC is working on getting a 3 day facilitator training. Check back here for more info.
“In what circumstances can a person considered insane be detained in an Asylum against his declared will?”
-Daniel Paul Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
This past weekend, Hearing Voices New York City, along with the International Society for the Psychological & Social Approaches to Psychosis and Das Unbehagen, staged an event called “Schreber Live!” which celebrated Daniel Paul Schreber’s first person account of “madness”, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. The event took place at the Jefferson Market Library and featured lectures, performances, visual art, poetry, and dance. One of the main features of the event was people scattered through-out the building, reading passages from the text. The purpose of the event was stated during the introduction:
“Schreber’s book–which is at once a memoir, a historical document, and a judicial treatise in support of his release from the asylum– is one of the most widely-known and cited first-person accounts of what is commonly called “madness”. Like the book, the Jefferson Market Library, is not only a location for literary pursuits, but once served as a court-house during the 1800s. In the garden behind the building stood a women’s house of detention, demolished in 1973. The brick-arched basement, served as a holding cell for prisoners on their way to jail or trial. In more recent times, the library was also the site of first community-based non-clinical peer-support group for voice-hearers in New York City. Today, as we celebrate Daniel Paul Schreber’s book within this courthouse-turned-library, there is a sense of redemption, of his words being taken seriously, given their rightful place not only within a literary institution, but also within a lawful one.”
The event brought well-over 150 people, many of which stated the power of reading Schreber’s words inside an old courthouse:
“It was amazing to be in that space and in those strange and tragic and wondrous discursive spaces, modern and old.”
“It was quite powerful for me to read Schreber to all who passed by and some who stopped to listen a bit. I loved hearing other readers and dropping in on whatever section they happened to be reading. The whole event was really great. Schreber would have been, and was, at home.”
“…it was a powerful experience. It truly felt like Schreber’s life, work, and experience, and the representation of those of others who have had similar experiences , were honored via this event.”
Images of the devices Schreber’s father created for child-rearingParticipants in a one-act play of Chapter 21 of the MemoirsGregory Shankland speaking on his own experiences of voices
It’s been a great weekend of film screenings dedicated to looking at psychological crises in new ways.
Friday evening was a screening of CRAZYWISE at NYU Langone Hospital. Featuring a panel with Peri Zarella, Issa Ibrahim, Sascha DuBurl & co-director of CRAZYWISE Kevin Tomlinson.
Kevin Tomlinson, Peri Zarella, Issa Ibrahim, & Sascha DuBrul Panel DiscussionThe crowd discussing the film before the Q & A began
Saturday afternoon was the NYC home-video launch of Healing Voices. The film followed with a panel Q & A featuring (among others) Oryx Cohen and Matt Estrada.
Healing Voices Banner at Anthology Film ArchivesPanel Q & A
Directions: Bus: M15 to 3rd Street. Subway: F train to 2nd Avenue, walk two blocks north on 2nd Avenue to 2nd Street;
#6 to Bleecker St., walk one block north on Lafayette, then two blocks east on Bond St. (turns into 2nd St.) to 2nd Avenue.
Tickets are $8-$12. There are small number of discounted tickets available. Contact president@isps-us.org by May 10 for more information.
