Interview with Robert Stamboliev by Silvia van der Werve
In the late 1980s, Robert Stamboliev applied Voice Dialogue with people who hear voices. Marius Romme and Sandra Escher wanted to find out whether the method could offer a different way in than combating or suppressing voices. Psychiatrist Dirk Corstens later saw Stamboliev at work and integrated direct dialogue with voices into his own approach. Almost forty years later, this way of working can be seen in the documentary My word against mine.
Robert Stamboliev had already been working with Voice Dialogue for several years when, in the late 1980s, he received an unusual request from social psychiatrist Marius Romme. Romme and his partner and colleague Sandra Escher were working on a subject that, at the time, was hardly approached in this way within psychiatry: what if people who say they hear voices are taken seriously in their experience?
Not: do those voices really exist? But: what do they say, what do they mean, and how can you relate to them?
In 1988, Romme and Escher first attended a two-day Voice Dialogue training with Stamboliev. They then asked him to try the method with people who actually heard voices. A small-scale programme followed with around ten participants, who received several sessions over the course of approximately a year. The findings were not published as scientific research, but they were presented at conferences.
Almost forty years later, My Word Against Mine shows how this way of working has been integrated into psychiatrist Dirk Corstens’ approach. In the film, he talks with people who hear voices—and directly with their voices. In a conversation with Stamboliev in June 2026, Corstens confirms that his introduction to Voice Dialogue formed an important foundation for the way he now works with people who hear voices.
When did Marius Romme first come to you?
“That was in 1988. Marius and Sandra Escher had been working with people who heard voices. Marius had come to the conclusion that you could not simply say: it is a hallucination, so it does not exist. He began searching. At some point he came across Voice Dialogue. He and Sandra attended a two-day training with me in Amsterdam. Afterwards he asked: could we try this with people who really hear voices?”
Voice Dialogue was not originally developed for that purpose at all.
“No. Hal and Sidra Stone developed Voice Dialogue to enter into conversation with different sides or subpersonalities within a person. The critic, the perfectionist, the pleaser, a vulnerable side — you name it. But someone who hears a voice does not necessarily say: ‘This is a part of me.’ They may say: ‘This is my father,’ ‘this is a spirit,’ or ‘There is someone talking to me.’ I discovered fairly quickly that I should not start arguing about that.”
So you did not say: that voice is actually a subpersonality of yours?
“No. Why would I? You might immediately break the connection. If someone tells me, ‘This is my grandfather,’ I am not going to say, ‘No, it is a subpersonality.’ First I want to know: who is that grandfather? What does he say? When does he appear? What does he want from you? You adapt to the client’s reality.”
That starting point sounds less unusual today than it did in the late 1980s. Within recovery-oriented care, greater attention has been paid to the personal meaning of voices and other psychotic experiences. But at the time, directly addressing voices was certainly not a self-evident part of psychiatric treatment.
Stamboliev, moreover, did not come from psychiatry. In his longer conversation about Voice Dialogue, he explains that this was precisely why caution was essential. When Romme invited him to the social psychiatry service in Maastricht, he had never previously worked in psychiatry. As long as he genuinely experienced contact with someone, he felt able to continue exploring; when that contact was absent, he stopped.
What happened during that first project?
“About ten voice hearers received several Voice Dialogue sessions. I worked together with clinical psychologist and Voice Dialogue facilitator Jerien Koolbergen and several other people. Marius and Sandra interviewed the participants beforehand, during the programme and at the end. It was very educational for me, because I had to adapt my own method. I could not simply impose the standard Voice Dialogue model.”
Stamboliev describes the outcomes of that early programme as positive. In his recollection, participants learned to cope better with their voices and, for some participants, the number of voices decreased. However, this was not a published controlled study. The significance of the experiment lay mainly in the possibility of directly exploring the relationship between a voice hearer and their voices.
What did you do when someone heard a threatening or critical voice?
“First, listen. Do not immediately try to change it. That is actually a fundamental principle of Voice Dialogue. When someone has a strong inner critic, we do not tell that critic: you have to go away. We want to know why it is there. What does it do? What is it trying to take care of? What might it be protecting? With voice hearing, that became even more important.”
But some voices are extremely aggressive. Why should you be curious about them?
“Curiosity does not mean that you approve of everything. You can take a voice seriously without agreeing with it. That distinction is important. You try to understand what is happening and what kind of relationship someone has with that voice.”
That idea — looking for function, meaning and relationship, even when a voice is negative or threatening — later became an important element of the approach developed by Corstens and others. Corstens describes their work as relational: not simply becoming more assertive towards voices or ignoring them, but directly exploring what role they play and what protective qualities may lie behind them.
Meeting Dirk Corstens
After the first programme, Stamboliev continued travelling to Maastricht for several years to train staff at what was then the RIAGG. There he met Dirk Corstens in 1992. Corstens remembers seeing Stamboliev work with clients. In their 2026 conversation, he says that the experience gave him the feeling that practitioners suddenly had tools for working with the voices. He subsequently immersed himself in Voice Dialogue.
Did you feel at the time that a new treatment was emerging?
“No, I did not think of it that way at all. I was exploring. I still think that is important. Voice Dialogue is not a box of techniques that you open and then carry out steps one, two and three. You have to look at the person sitting in front of you.”
That also asks something of the therapist.
“Yes. From which side of yourself are you working? A therapist has parts too. Perhaps you have a very strong helper in you. Naturally, that part wants someone to stop suffering. Or you have a very analytical side that wants to understand what the voice ‘really’ is. All of that can be useful. But when one such side completely takes over, you may no longer hear what the client is telling you.”
“He doesn’t believe in my snakes”
In the conversation with Stamboliev, Corstens recalls an early session that stayed with him. A woman spoke about snakes that formed part of her reality. Stamboliev engaged with her experience with curiosity, without claiming that he himself shared that reality.
Afterwards, the woman told Corstens that it had been one of the best conversations she had ever had, but also: “He doesn’t believe that I have snakes.” For Corstens, that was precisely where something essential lay: someone could show interest in her reality while at the same time retaining a different view of reality.
Is that the position you are looking for: neither going along with it nor denying it?
“Exactly. I do not need to know whether something is objectively true. That is liberating. I do not have to decide: the voice exists or the voice does not exist. I can look at it this way: for this person, this is an experience right now. What is happening there?”
But there has to be a boundary.
“Of course. Contact and safety are essential. In Maastricht, I once experienced that I did not feel I had contact with someone. Then I stopped. You should not enthusiastically carry out a technique simply because it happens to be called Voice Dialogue. Especially when people are very vulnerable, you must continuously sense: are we still together? Can someone come back? Is there enough grounding?”
That emphasis on safety is also consistent with the current way of working as Corstens describes it. In the research protocol, practitioners do not immediately begin speaking directly with voices. First, they work on ways of coping with overwhelming experiences and on developing a personal “toolbox.” Then the voices and the person’s life history are explored. Only after that can direct or indirect contact with the voices take place.
From Maastricht to My word against mine
After meeting Stamboliev, Corstens continued developing direct work with voices. This did not happen without resistance. He says that around 2003 or 2004 he submitted an article in which Voice Dialogue was mentioned. An editor appreciated the clinical work but asked him to remove the reference to Voice Dialogue. Corstens refused. Later, together with Eleanor Longden and Rufus May, he published case material on relational work with voices.
By now, the situation has changed. In the 2026 conversation, Corstens discusses a large research project in Manchester involving three hundred voice hearers. He is involved as a supervisor. According to Corstens, the results were positive and the method proved applicable within mainstream mental health services. For exact effect sizes and comparisons with other treatments, the scientific publications from the study would need to be consulted; the conversation itself does not provide sufficient detail for that.
And now there is the documentary Mijn woord tegen het mijne, which shows a broad audience what it means when a therapist not only asks what voices say, but actually addresses a voice directly.
What did you think when you saw Dirk working in the documentary?
“I thought it was beautiful. You can see that he is not mechanically applying a method. He enters into a relationship. Sometimes he follows a voice, sometimes he changes position, sometimes he confronts. I recognise that very strongly from Voice Dialogue.”
Is what Corstens does today still Voice Dialogue?
From “How do we get rid of it?” to “What does it have to say?”
Perhaps the most important change ultimately lies in the question being asked. When a voice is regarded solely as a symptom, an obvious question follows: how do we get rid of it? Stamboliev, and later Corstens, add a different question: what happens if we listen first?
That does not mean romanticising suffering. Corstens specifically points out that people can be desperate and may understandably want the voices to disappear. A therapist has to take that wish seriously. At the same time, it is possible to explore whether someone can develop a different relationship with the voices.
After almost forty years, what have you yourself learned from voice hearers?
“Perhaps above all, to be humble. As a therapist, you know far less than you think. You can have theories and diagnoses and models, but ultimately there is someone sitting opposite you with an experience. If you can remain genuinely curious, something new can emerge.”
And does the voice then not have to disappear?
“You cannot determine that in advance. What matters is that someone is no longer completely controlled by what is happening. That more space and more choice become possible. That was actually always the intention of Voice Dialogue: not to destroy a part of someone, but to help someone develop a different relationship with it.”
Perhaps that is also the line running from Maastricht in 1988 to Corstens’ work in 2026. Not the assumption that every voice is a “subpersonality.” Stamboliev let go of that idea precisely when the reality of the voice hearer required it. The more important discovery was simpler: you can enter into dialogue with a voice without first deciding what that voice is.
And sometimes treatment begins not with an answer, but with a willingness to listen.
A Historical Timeline
- 1988 – Marius Romme and Sandra Escher attend a two-day Voice Dialogue training with Robert Stamboliev; afterwards, a small-scale programme with voice hearers begins.
- Late 1980s / 1990s – Stamboliev presents his experiences at conferences and trains staff in Maastricht.
- Early 1990s – Dirk Corstens sees Stamboliev working with voice hearers and subsequently immerses himself in Voice Dialogue.
- 2000–present – Corstens and others further develop relational work with voices and publish case material and research.
- 2026 – Corstens discusses the historical influence of Voice Dialogue in a podcast with Stamboliev; Mijn woord tegen het mijne introduces direct dialogue with voices to a broad audience.
Sources and Editorial Note
- Robert Stamboliev & Dirk Corstens, “Hearing Voices and Voice Dialogue,” podcast transcript, 22 June 2026, Voice Dialogue World: https://voicedialogueworld.com/nl/stemmen-horen-en-voice-dialogue/
- Robert Stamboliev, Voice Dialogue: in Conversation, interview by David Grabijn, 2026.
- The positive outcomes of the early Maastricht programme mentioned in the interview are based on Stamboliev’s retrospective account and were not published at the time as controlled scientific research.
- Marius Romme & Dirk Corstens, testimonial on Robert Stamboliev’s work with voice hearers, 1998.
- The comments on the recent Manchester study have deliberately been phrased cautiously in this version. Before publication, the exact research findings and bibliographic details can be added on the basis of the scientific publication.
- My word against mine, documentary by Maasja Ooms, 2025.
