Introduction: Hallucinations are often defined as perceptions when there is no object to perceive. However, clinical practitioners only have access to what their patients tell them about their hallucinations. By cooperating in the construction of a meaning for the hallucination, practitioner and patient can reach a common ground. This "co-construction" produces "hallucinatory stories" that are narratives, which revolve around this phenomenon. This raises the question of where the voices are temporally and spatially in the structure of the narrative.
Methods: Fourteen patients meeting the DSM-IV schizophrenia criteria were included and took part in a filmed standardized interview. The markers of temporal and spatial localization were listed and their occurrence in the narrative calculated (Student t test and Wilcoxon test).
Result: The results revealed that: a significant difference between the present perfect tenses. There is a distinction between what is happening now and what has happened in the past; a significant difference between the markers of temporal localization such as accomplishment and position. The hallucinatory phenomena repeat themselves. Furthermore, the subjects' judgements concerning the moment at which the hallucinatory phenomenon arises are objective and are accompanied by a temporal reference associated with their story; a significant difference between the markers of spatial localization, with relative positions being preferred. The voices constitute a distinct, autonomous spatial reference for hallucination subjects.
Conclusion: The narrative makes it possible to give the hallucinatory voices a place in the subject's story. The "hallucinatory stories" represent a transition from the private to the intersubjective world, a way for subjects to appropriate these experiences. When articulated in words, this experience is a product distinct from the self. This distinction between self and non-self, the hallucinating patient and his/her voices, seems to be conveyed in part by the markers of temporal and spatial position.