Eleanor Longden

Eleanor Longden overcame her diagnosis of schizophrenia to earn a master’s in psychology and demonstrate that the voices in her head were “a sane reaction to insane circumstances.”

Despite what traditional medicine may opine, Eleanor Longden isn’t crazy -- and neither are many other people who hear voices in their heads. In fact, the psychic phenomenon is a “creative and ingenious survival strategy” that should be seen “not as an abstract symptom of illness to be endured, but as complex, significant, and meaningful experience to be explored,” the British psychology researcher says.

Longden spent many years in the psychiatric system before earning a BSc and an MSc in psychology, the highest classifications ever granted by the University of Leeds, England. Today she is studying for her PhD, and lectures and writes about recovery-oriented approaches to psychosis, dissociation and complex trauma.

Her "part personal memoir and part medical argument", Learning from the Voices in My Head, was recently published.