family tradition

I don’t have a specific diagnosis for Joseph, but I don’t think he’s hearing the voice of god. I don’t think he’s making it up though; he does hear a voice, and he does believe that it’s god speaking to him. I think Joseph is having auditory hallucinations in tandem with dissociative episodes, all of this formed/triggered by his trauma stemming from childhood abuse. It seems to me in the FC6 DLC, Collapse, that Greg Bryk voices Joseph and the Voice, so it isn’t an external voice of god that he hears but an internal one. Joseph experiences this as an external voice, but it isn’t actually coming from a source other than his own mind. I think this voice has been shaped by his abusive upbringing, one that utilized religion (specifically Christianity) to justify itself. This is, as far as I’m aware, what Joseph recalls in The Book of Joseph that was published with collector’s editions of FC5. His abusive father would beat him and his siblings and drunkenly shout Bible verses at them. Joseph first hears the voice when he’s being physically assaulted and abused by his father, and the voice later tells him that he and his brothers have a destiny and a future . After a long period of silence, he hears the voice again after being assaulted on his way to work. When he hears the voice, there seems to be some external event that triggers it. Because of this I think the voice is an auditory hallucination Joseph experiences in connection with a form of dissociation during high stress events, particularly violent and abusive ones. This is, of course, arm chair psychology. I’m not an expert and Joseph Seed isn’t a real person, but this is to the best of my knowledge a rough idea of what I think is happening when Joseph hears the voice.