AVATAR Therapy for Refractory Auditory Hallucinations

Excerpt

While attempts to understand voice hearing need to acknowledge the complexity and diversity of the experience (Woods et al. 2014), the majority of hearers describe voices that take the form of a characterized “other” with whom a personally meaningful relationship develops (Beavan 2011); McCarthy-Jones et al. 2014). AVATAR therapy is part of a new and exciting wave of therapies which adopt an explicitly relational and dialogic approach to working with the distressing voices. To understand the AVATAR approach, it is important to consider its position in the evolution of psychological interventions for distressing voices.