Programmings under Electronic Ear

Communication presented by Mme Espinat, of the Paris Language Centre, at the 2nd International Congress of Audio-Psycho-Phonology (Paris, 14 May 1972). Under the chairmanship of Mme Tomatis, Mme Espinat — agrégée professor of mathematics recently joined the Language Centre — takes up the question of programming under Electronic Ear outlined the previous year at the SECRAP Congress. She describes the sequence of the four great phases that replay, under the device, the auditory evolution of the human being: filtered sounds (V.H.F.) reproducing intra-uterine communication, sonic birth causing the passage from aquatic to aerial listening, pre-linguistic period (filtered music, Gregorian chants, filtered sibilants), and then the linguistic period with the introduction of the paternal voice and text trainings. The discussion that follows, animated by Mme Tomatis with Mr Dubard, Mme Zimmerman, Dr Sidlauskas, Dr Sarkissoff and Prof. Tomatis, extends the paper on the technical quality of the tapes, the case of left-handers, the father’s voice, Gregorian and Tibetan chants, and the acoustic impedances proper to each place.

Programmings under Electronic Ear — The different types of tapes and their use

by Madame Espinat — Paris Language Centre

Chair: Mme Tomatis

Introduction

Before beginning this paper, I should first like to thank Mme Tomatis for having allowed me to deepen the problem of the distribution of the different sorts of recorded magnetic tapes to be used under Electronic Ear. I should also ask Prof. Tomatis to be kind enough to rectify the errors I may make in the course of this communication. His ideas are so rich and so numerous that much time is needed to integrate them, and as I am still stammering, there is a strong chance of major lacunae in the work I propose to present to you here. I therefore count on the indulgence of Prof. Tomatis and on yours too, of course, and I thank you in advance.

We shall take up today the question of programming that Mme Tomatis already broadly evoked last year at the SECRAP Congress of 1971. It is indeed a problem of great importance, given the evolution of the audio-vocal techniques that we are led to use, one and all, with the help of the Electronic Ear. This device — we all know it now for having often experimented with it — is in itself a set of exceptional efficacy; but when one adjoins to it a very elaborate programming, the results are only more perceptible and more rapid.

This programming will take account of the different auditory stages the being is called to cross, from his foetal life to his real age, in a dynamic course that will allow him to go further, ever further, until the moment when he is in possession of a well-elaborated, perfectly structured, solidly self-controlled language, by means of which he will be able to express easily the thought that traverses him.

We shall therefore broach successively, in this order, the phases the child travels through: from intra-uterine life, of which we shall know the importance; then we shall be led to speak of the sonic births intended to make audition pass from liquid impedance to aerial impedance. This stage crossed, we propose the setting in place of linguistic structures rich in high harmonics — this will be the period of filtered sibilants, with which we shall associate Gregorian chants. We shall be led to increase the perception of the highs with the help of filtered music and to install the sonic code by means of Gregorian chant trainings. The following phase will be that of language proper, with, in certain cases, a dynamic intervention of the filtered paternal voice, symbolic representative of the Verb. The paternal voice will be alternated with filtered music sessions, various texts, and so on. Finally, the journey will end, in certain cases, with a training in English, when it is particularly useful for high frequencies and whose unconscious audition on the plane of communication in the subjects of our nation.

The general schema whose broad lines I have just evoked, and which applies as much to children as to adolescents and adults, must only be a working proposal that may be modified according to the various cases to be treated with the help of the Electronic Ear. That is to say, we shall have to bring in successively and to differ from what we shall now speak of at greater length and which will determine for us the various sorts of categorised tapes to be used in the framework of a programming. To simplify the paper, we shall place ourselves in the case where the subject to be educated is a child.

I. First phase: filtered sounds

We shall therefore begin with the period of “filtered sounds”, which corresponds to intra-uterine listening, to the first sonic stages in human life, in an aquatic milieu which is that of foetal life. This training is done in full from the maternal voice recorded and filtered. It is necessary to make these recordings at low charge. It is desirable to perform these recordings in silence under Electronic Ear. This avoids these maternal voices being parasitised by high frequencies of the order of 3,000 Hz, going up to 5,000 Hz. Moreover, for good voices, we filter them at eight thousand Hz, as we have specified: thus we shall have filtered tapes of tenderness, of love, in which what is important for the child will have been taken up: the message of tone of audition.

We then filter this “maternal” voice at 8,000 Hz, which represents, as a general rule, the effect of revival of this listening, exclusively used in the first stage (the big word continues in reality of the frequency devolved) at birth, called the VHF (“High-Frequency Maternal Voice” or, abbreviated, V.H.F.), which we play for about twenty sessions, in general.

The listening to this V.H.F. enables the child to relive his intra-uterine life and to find again the first sonic impressions. It has started, and it is now admitted that the foetus hears in his mother’s womb and has an effect since the cochlear nerve is active from the 5th month of pregnancy, and that consequently sonic messages reach the foetus, in particular the voice of his mother. They reach him after having crossed layers of water, those of the amniotic fluid. So the filtering of the water operates at a high level only to reproduce the listening predominance of acoustic of the water, to eliminate the frequencies proper to an aquatic filtering.

When we cannot record the maternal voice, we begin the audio-vocal education with sessions of filtered music at 8,000 Hz, which we call the V.HF₂ (series A), from very studied music itself — as a general rule, the works of Mozart above all, as a basis for V.HF, works of Bach (concertos in particular), the music of a great composer very complete, indeed, in all the neuronic rhythms, in all the universal systems with which our nervous rhythm must come into resonance.

The revival of intra-uterine life engendered by the listening to “filtered sounds”, or V.HF, but especially V.HF_P, gives the being the possibility of finding again, through the listeners of the loudspeakers, the sounds proper to foetal life. It is a very important shift that enables the re-establishment of the sense of relation, the true relation, the deep relation, and that most often suppresses the traumas, the blockages, the refusals that may arise and that prevent the individual from evolving normally on the plane of communication with the outside world.

During this period of “filtered sounds”, the desire to communicate, to live, more intense, will on the other hand awaken. It is little known, the one who listens during pregnancy. The most difficult children — such as schizophrenics — are insolently established in the sonic world of foetal life. It is a very important approach that enables the re-establishment of the sense of relation, the true relation, the deep relation, and that most often suppresses the traumas, the blockages, the refusals that may arise and that prevent the individual from evolving normally on the plane of communication with the outside world.

Besides the revival of intra-uterine life, the filtered sounds, rich in high frequencies, bring to the brain a major electrical charge, since in the organ of Corti the cells stimulated by the highs are much more numerous than those impressed by the lows. The filtered sounds therefore constitute kinds of special recharge.

Lastly, it is well to note that the eardrum tightens of itself to perceive the high frequencies — that is, the sounds accommodated that rejoin in the wave and intervene intrinsically more than the lows. It is thus that the VHF_P, and Prof. Tomatis has on several occasions stressed this, bring into play a true gymnastics of the eardrum and allow the ear to take back consciousness of its posture. It must also be emphasised that the filtered maternal voice, through its own revival sub-foetal listening, will efface or calm the vagal nerve.

Naturally, these “filtered sounds” only give the indicated results if they are listened to through the Electronic Ear, which, thanks to the play of its filters and gating, allows the eardrum to learn to tighten itself via the middle ear, which then plays a true gymnastics. The ear then becomes conscious of its ideal listening posture, thanks to which the being can hear his mother’s voice as he heard it in utero, while benefiting from the recharge of the so plebiscited frequencies and from the calming of the vagal nerve.

This first period of audio-vocal education therefore constitutes a true session of listening to filtered sounds, preferably from the voice of the mother of the subject to be educated. We have noted that the results were more rapid and better when the education began with the VHF, which is particularly effective, goes further, the disorder of rhythm, a disorder of listening and a difficulty of behaviour. In all cases, the communication disorder thus resident is more rapidly erased when one begins with filtered sounds.

We can make several remarks here:

For certain difficult children, when the mother-child relation is very tense, notably in the case of autism and schizophrenia, the number of V.HF sessions may be 30, 50 or 80;
It is advised to intercalate a few LCF sessions in the VHF series when the subject, especially the adult, manifests much intervention;
When the audio-vocal education must be temporarily interrupted (for reasons of travel or holidays, for example) while the V.HF period is not finished, it is desirable to have the last two sessions done in LCF.

II. Second phase: sonic birth

The sonic birth constitutes the second phase of the programming, a phase of very great importance also, for, if it is desirable that the child relive his intra-uterine life, he must then still be born to aerial life, leave his foetal state to prepare himself for his adult existence.

Mme Tomatis asked us this year to study particularly this phase of sonic birth, which constitutes one of the great moments of the undertaken approach and which contains a stage of exceptional desincrustation, capable of erasing a large part of the asperities that have rendered the path difficult and sometimes impassable.

We therefore proceed, during this second period of programming, to a modification of acoustic impedances that will make the subject pass from aquatic to aerial audition. This change of sonic universe marks the event of birth that accompanies the coming into the world, and is carried out in one or several sessions. It is therefore a question of carrying out this true “descent into hell” in a progressive way. We shall thus have four sorts, or rather five sorts of AS:

AS₁, which corresponds to the maternal voice filtered at 5,000 Hz;
AS₂, which corresponds to the maternal voice filtered at 4,000 Hz;
AS₃, which corresponds to the maternal voice filtered at 2,000 Hz;
AS₄, which corresponds to the maternal voice filtered at 1,000 Hz.

The AS proper will be the sonic birth carried out in a single session in the following way:

During the first 4 minutes, the maternal voice will be filtered at 8,000 Hz;
During the following 6 minutes, it will be filtered at 5,000 Hz, then at 4,000, 2,000, 1,000, 500, 250 Hz, every 4 minutes;
During the last minutes, it will no longer be filtered.

As a general rule, we proceed by passing successively AS₁, AS₂, AS₃ and AS₄, then AS₁, AS₂, AS₃ in the course of the 2 or 3 following sessions, then the AS, and then re-listening in VHF_P, because the non-filtered maternal voice (V.HFP) is what the child secures himself by and finds again: on listening at the time of communication, the voice he heard in the depths of his foetal night.

It is only when the child has found again his mother’s voice that one can pass to the next stage. It is not rare to observe that, mother or unknown of the VHF_P, the subject no longer recognises the maternal voice. We then advise pursuing, for the time it takes, this phase of revival and observing it by making the individual hear through his anguish cells with intelligence through his anguish cells.

As long as this following relation is not in place, one must pursue the AS₁ and likewise then play the series VHF₃, AS (one will then need VHF₁ and AS₁ several times until the anguish appears: listening begins to free itself. It is the instant — “and you will be there”, that is the child the moment, anguish is no more, it is mummy’s voice"). The proof speaks then broadly with the lineament. It is necessary, for children appearing aggressive, to wait for certain signs that mark recognition of the maternal voice.

This phase of sonic birth may be more or less accepted by the subject placed under Electronic Ear. Some children refuse this change of sonic universe, reject this coming into the world, wish to remain in the reassuring uterine cycle. One must then patiently resume the AS (AS₁, AS₂…), which may be played alternately with the VHF_P and then with the VHF.

During this delicate period, and in case the child cannot benefit from a cycle of filtered music sessions, one can, by freeing him from his anxiety about what he undergoes from his child’s parts, obtain a new recording of her voice which, of course, will reflect the deep modification of maternal psychiatry. And the VHF_P sessions will then mark true reunions between mother and child.

And while the relation thus continues in a mode of securing and love, we may then broach another phase, that of the invitation to listening that will allow the child to open his auditory diaphragm to the language of his environment.

III. Third phase: the pre-linguistic period

This preparation, intended to condition the neuronic circuits that will serve as the basis for the coding of linguistic messages, can be done with as many tapes as one will use, according to the case, either alternately or in series.

In the general framework of a “typical programming”, we shall begin this phase around the 80th session, after the filtered sounds and sessions of sonic birth and VHF_P. The tapes to be used will then be those of filtered music (LCF), Gregorian chants (of the LCG series) and filtered sibilants.

It is to be noted, in passing, that from this period on, auditory lateralisation must be undertaken. While so far — that is, during the VHF_P sessions excelling at sonic birth — the “Balance” knob was set at 7, it now becomes necessary for us to uncover progressively down to 0 to make the right ear ever more dominant on the plane of self-control. One must think, as a general rule, of 5 sessions at 5, then 5 sessions at 3, the rest of the audio-vocal education being carried out with a setting of the “Balance” knob at 1.

The filtered music (LCF) is therefore distributed, during this pre-linguistic period, alternately with sessions of children’s songs, of Gregorian chants of the LCG series. It is intended to relax, to disengage the subject while reassuring him. Through the play of the dynamic trainings of this music, it suspends the reassuring action of the vagal nerve in the 7th. The subject has carried us at length then. It thus becomes an element of soothing usable at any moment of education.

We have the possibility, at the Language Centre, of having adults do the filtered music sessions in a lying position allowing better relaxation. We see to it that the subject remains conscious, sleep being in general a sign of flight to the unconscious, but it is necessary to be able to broach these sessions, especially when the individual is having a deep work on the unconscious fact pushed back in him.

Let us further remark that it is important for the subject — and also often for the father — to benefit from filtered music sessions while the child follows his programme, so that the parents understand the approach being realised. For the mother, these filtered music sessions relax her at the same time as they energise her and give her again the desire to live. Thus she will be able, in turn, to transmit to her child the presence of life and love that he needs to communicate with his environment.

This is therefore essential for the child, who will then have much more desire to dialogue with his mother. One does not lose at an environment to applaud. Furthermore, these LCF sessions calm the mother, allow her to react calmly to the difficulties and the snags of aggressiveness that the child manifests, in particular at the beginning of the education. Cycles of video under mother that does not have its existence very often, and it is necessary that, by her healthy reaction, parents avoid his feeling guilty.

The filtered music is distributed, during this period, alternately with other recordings that differ according to the subject’s age. When it is a question of a small child or an adolescent being in language (or default of language), one uses alternately with the LCF trainings of children’s songs or Gregorian chants. These choices have also been prepared linguistic tapes. All the games of little pre-musical of the linguistic context, the sessions of children’s songs based on simple rhythms and modifications imposed on the system, have for role to prepare the child to the pre-music of the most characteristic sonic movements, are often very effective in entraining the child towards the desire to communicate with the outside world.

The Gregorian chants, which belong to the category of sounds called “sacred” because they play in the frequential band of cortical recharge, have the double action of animating this modulation and that of calming certain parts of the vagal nerve. They are very important for the elaboration of the calming of anguish. The Gregorian chant indeed leaves, played the bodily zones sensitive to the sequences of phonomania, but we all now know, the nerve of anxiety.

The Gregorian tapes from which we proceed (the LCG series) are sound tapes that allow the subject, with the help of an expected background track, to repeat the proposed Gregorian phrase. It is desirable to help the person who begins to perceive the Gregorian phrase thus filtered, to thus record and concretise to the child. About ten may suffice; the individual is still very little just seen. We use tapes longer and longer, leading to a feeling of revival of the Gregorian chants true that we give ourselves. The plane of the fall of the plane of anxiety. Furthermore, when we have in the course of education a very attacked or dazed person or one unable to regulate certain linguistic trainings (notably during examination periods in pupils and students), we instil into his programme, during this critical phase, exclusively Gregorian sessions, alternated from time to time with filtered music sessions.

The filtered sibilants that form part of this series are used in general after a few sessions (2 to 6) of filtered music from which the subject benefits during the period of filtered sounds, sonic birth and VHF_P. These tapes are constituted from voices rich in high harmonics (such as sibilants or fricatives), from which the low frequencies have been progressively suppressed in order to oblige audition, and in particular right audition, to direct itself towards the high frequencies.

The filtering of these sibilants is currently done, in the laboratories of the Paris Language Centre, from 500 to 6,000 Hz in the child; from 500 to 6,000 Hz in the adult; between 500 and 6,000 Hz for the child, adolescent, adolescent girl. There exist three increasingly filtered tapes. The first of each series carries certain frequencies above 1,000 Hz; the second, above 2,000 Hz, and so on up to 6 or 7,000 Hz. Thus the eardrum learns to tighten itself more and more as one passes from one tape to the other, thus to discharge gradually, allowing the perception of the high frequencies (which are, I take the liberty of recalling, those of the greatest cortical recharge).

In listening difficulties in the course of a filtered sibilants session, it is possible to replay in series the less following tape before broaching the following tape, that is to say the tape considered more filtered.

The interest of these sound trainings is to improve considerably the auditory analysis in the cortical recharge zone and to apprehend the eardrum in such a way that it holds itself more, the subject being rejected behind the anguish resonances.

This pre-linguistic period, which constitutes the third phase of programming and which prepares the individual to dialogue with the other, helps him to secure himself. He will then be able to broach the following phase, that of language proper.

IV. Fourth phase: the linguistic period

It is therefore around the 80th-90th session that one can envisage playing texts and phrases, that one can move to inscribe the verb at the heart of language, in certain tendencies, through the symbolic representations: the father.

The paternal voice (PV) must be, as you all know, used with much precaution. All the more precaution as the voice takes on the character of the father of the child and the father. The encounter with the father’s voice is not just listening to a simple sonic message. That is why, in order to avoid this provocative divergence, we reserve sonic sounds for names and vowels to evoke the broad lines — schematic sounds linked to songs, music, syllables, joints, phonemes, filtered sounds, as well as throughout the music programme. On listening to the schematic sounds linked to the child accepts in the form of play. On listening to this voice, so that he may repeat certain phonemes and the phoneme in question under Electronic Ear, if he has language, his entry into his world of the grown-ups, that he be that he notices, his initiation to language, his entry into the world of the grown-ups, that one had not so that he could repeat the phoneme makes his encounter, under Electronic Ear.

The sounds, the syllables thus reach, through the headphones, the ears and more particularly the right ear, by phenomena of auditory lateralisation that are kinds of progressively engaging the control circuits of voice and language. The right/left decoupling in the voice can maintain at the level of the left ear. The “Balance” knob being at 1, that is to say a little energy on the left ear, is distributed as follows: 80% for the right ear and 10% for the left ear (when the cortex is on the right, this is heard).

The perception of sounds, their analysis, their integration will therefore be done by the right ear in an ever finer, more subtle way. Without trying to understand, the child explores the senses rich in resonances and high frequencies that will be transmitted to him by the headphones. Before the microphone, he will be able to recall these voices he has just invited, with risks episodes benefit from a sonoricellular springboard. It is thus that the desire to communicate with others — and perhaps also to dialogue with Dad — begin to manifest themselves perceptibly.

The moment is and from that point evident, we may envisage playing the tape of “texts”, with its sometimes violent reactions, refusals, gestures of sorts that may appear incomprehensible or not sufficiently prepared by the confrontation. That is why he makes tapes of less filtered levels less and less until the foetal listening is removed, under tubes and tapes to listening not enough prepared is not too brutal. Taking account of the different multiple stages of the child during the period when he should normally have begun to dialogue with his father, we play the progressive passage in a sound tape going from 300 to 500 Hz (PV), corresponding to 5 sessions more, often attested in the PV. It also results in passing to 300-2,000 Hz (PV), then to 2,000-4,000 Hz (PV) and finally, for the last PV sessions, in a real passband letting the scale of frequencies intervene to give to perceive the audition of a human being.

For the recording of the paternal voice, it is recommended, as for the MV, to propose texts letting noble, generous, elevated sentiments intervene, pleasant and hopeful thoughts that the child will hear with pleasure. One may also propose to certain fathers to prepare true trainings with sonic blanks during which the child will be able to react to what his father has recorded. The relation will be closer, and the encounter will be facilitated.

These paternal voice trainings are especially recommended in cases where the child refuses the encounter with the father, of cases direct communication with him — such as left-handedness, stammering, certain behaviour disorders and certain inscription difficulties — and are broadly opened by this sonic contribution.

It is therefore only from this educational effort that one will be able to envisage playing tapes of “texts” that will have to be adapted to mental age, to real age and to cultural level. At these stages of audition, at these stages of audition, the sessions may be alternated with LCF sessions, Gregorian chant, filtered sibilants from 4 to 6,000 Hz, reading and teaching, filtered sibilants from 4 to 6,000 Hz, with trainings in foreign languages.

Let us note in passing that broaching reading must not employ many text trainings under Electronic Ear; it is well to observe a few basic rules of the control circuits. Before being able to integrate perfectly what he reads, the subject must accustom himself to reading aloud without trying to understand the text read. A period — often long — will be necessary to prepare the audio-vocal regulators bringing into play the various parameters: voice intensity, timbre, syllables, verbal codes, intonation, and so on. When at the end of the course semantics will appear, it is only from this fact much of semantics appears aloud the subject will be able to become a virtuoso of reading. It he will have performance, he will have to exercise every day reading aloud for a certain time, in order to consolidate his acquisition and keep perfect self-control.

The journey is thus ended. The subject has finally accepted the relation with another, by arriving at a perfectly structured self-control. He is ready to dialogue with the universe. His language is interiorised, modulated; he is himself, and free, and he sings and speaks in tune; he knows how to express his thought. The child is calm; he is happy to live and to feel himself living through his language.

Our mission seems duly accomplished.

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Conclusion

Here therefore, in fact, is what we can currently present to you on the plane of programming, throughout the journey that goes from intra-uterine communication to human language. It is certain that when one respects this course by re-establishing under the device the relations lived by the foetus, the newborn, the child, the adolescent and then the adult, the results obtained are much more perceptible and go much further in the domain of the realisation of the being. That is why we have insisted today on the various sorts of magnetic tapes that should be used to reach the sought aim rapidly.

Much certainly remains to be done on the plane of recordings and of the sonic nourishment to be distributed to all those who come to see us so that we may help them. Numerous studies are in progress at the Paris Language Centre, and we form the wish that it be the same in all the institutes of France and beyond, equipped with Electronic Ears.

We think that, in the years to come, efforts must be focused on programming with the aim of increasing the efficacy of our techniques and of more and more rapidly suppressing the blockages, the traumas, the fixations that compromise the progression of the being in the journey he must accomplish to attain the high spheres of humanisation.

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Discussion of Mme Espinat’s paper (Paris)

Debate chaired by Madame Tomatis

Mme Tomatis

I think we can thank Mme Espinat warmly for the paper she has just given us, all the more so as she has been working with us for a short time and has shown great courage in presenting this communication. Mme Espinat is above all a pedagogue; she is Agrégée Professor of Mathematics, and not long ago she was teaching in a Terminale class. She left her pedagogical activity, thinking that at the Language Centre she could help others more. I really believe she has done very, very good work.

We shall certainly have to take up this problem of tapes, which is an essential problem. Some people tell us: “I have tried to treat this case under Electronic Ear”; “we did Electronic Ear and it did not work”. Well, if it did not work, it is because one did not know how to use the device correctly or to bring in a valid programming. For doing Electronic Ear means nothing if one does not know how to use it.

When one joins to it a programming that takes account of the various auditory stages and stages of communication the being must cross from intra-uterine life to his adult state equipped with a perfectly structured language, one obtains very good results. There is no reason why, at the Language Centre, satisfactory results are obtained and less good ones elsewhere. It is quite simply because the Electronic Ear is not used completely and perfectly in some Centres.

It is a device, we now know, that is very precious; it is a fine instrument; but one must know how to adjust it, and moreover to couple it with tape recorders of very high quality, using excellent magnetic tapes. Not long ago I went to a Centre where I was made to hear a tape of sibilants cut at 3,000 Hz. The sound seeming defective to me, I asked to hear the original tape coming from the Language Centre; this tape was very good. It was therefore the copy made of it that was defective. There is no point in playing filtered sibilants if, at the level of the dubbing, one suppresses the advantage of this tape.

I believe one must insist not only on the adjustment of the device — which is essential — but also on the quality of the tape recorder, of the magnetic tape, and finally on the value of the programming that must mark the course of the educative treatment.

I think we can now ask those who have very important experience of this programming to share their observations with us. We have at the Language Centre the possibility of applying new research on a large scale and of launching certain statistics. We shall very willingly experiment with what is proposed to us by the other Centres.

We were speaking yesterday with Mme Zimmerman about the filtered music sessions; Mme Zimmerman pointed out that the Lyon team had pupils do, under filtered music, exercises of free expression, free texts, and that, by reason of this, the child unblocked himself at the level of his written language in a remarkable way. We have never done that at the Language Centre, but we are ready to apply it, since it is for the purpose of helping more the children entrusted to us. One may even apply these exercises to adults, for we have many adults who also have a problem of written expression. We currently have adult dyslexics who come to follow Electronic Ear sessions in our services. These persons certainly know how to read the newspaper, but at 40 or 50 years old, they realise that they cannot really enter into the reading of the texts that would interest them. They wish to cultivate themselves, but they do not like to read; they cannot really decode written language.

Dr Sidlauskas

This new experience Mme Zimmerman brings us, is it very elaborate?

Mme Tomatis

It is done under filtered music; the children write what they wish; they do a kind of composition in a wholly free way, whereas until now we only had them draw. We had not envisaged making them write.

Mr Dubard

I believe one must insist on the value of the cords, which must be shielded and of good quality, on the cleaning of the magnetic heads, which must be very frequent and well done, and finally on the demagnetising of the heads. I now do this regularly because I have noticed that there were parts of tapes that were erased or had become almost inaudible, quite simply because the tape recorder head was becoming magnetised, charging. Small devices are now sold that demagnetise the heads very well.

Mme Tomatis

That is perfect; I believe we must one and all detect everything that may prevent the educational treatment from being totally effective.

Mme Zimmerman

We are trying this method, especially for children who have spelling difficulties and do not present any particular psychological disorders. Under filtered music, we ask them to write what they want. Those who are usually unable to write to dictation manage to write without spelling mistakes when they are under Electronic Ear and always in filtered music. They are then asked to draw their text. Those who did not want to do so before these sessions now draw very willingly.

Mme Tomatis

That is very interesting; I believe each of us should pay attention to these experiences.

Mme Zimmerman

We had a child who at the start made 32 spelling mistakes; after 56 Electronic Ear sessions, he made only 5.

Mme Tomatis

I believe it would be well to insist on the problem of left-handers regarding the number of sessions to envisage. More sessions must of course be foreseen for a left-hander than for a right-hander. A left-handed dyslexic requires more time than a right-handed one on the plane of educational treatment. For a left-hander, at least 100 sessions must be done; that is the average number to envisage a lateralisation to the right. For a classical dyslexia, a term, at the rate of 4 sessions a week (that is to say 2 times 2 sessions), is a good average — that is, 50 sessions. But for the left-hander, at least 2 to 3 terms must be foreseen, that is to say 100 to 150 sessions. If you have done 150 sessions and the child remains left-handed, you must go further, but that is very, very rare.

Prof. Tomatis

The mother must let the child go; it is the mother who holds him on the left; the symbolism is found at that level. Mothers like their left-handed child; it is rare for a mother to bring us her left-handed child, while the father cannot tolerate the child being left-handed, because symbolically and implicitly it is a refusal of the child to dialogue with the father. It is a refusal of the right and of its symbolic representative: the father.

Dr Sarkissoff

I have a left-handed child whose father died when he was 10; he is now 15; he is very fixated on his mother, and the mother, who is in psychotherapy with me, brings me her son, but I have not seen that the mother could play a role like the one you seem to recognise in her.

Prof. Tomatis

She did! She certainly captured the child before 7, and it is the absence of the father’s image that the child retranslates into his absence of the image of the right.

Mme Tomatis

Moreover, for left-handers, we always bring in the father’s voice, around the 60th session. Major reactions, refusals, reluctances may occur. The child is left-handed precisely because he does not want to encounter his father. That is why the filtering of the father’s voice in a certain way is often necessary. At the start, only certain passbands are brought in, so that the encounter is less brutal, the confrontation less important.

Prof. Tomatis

The reactions of which you were spoken just now are sometimes extraordinarily violent: the child breaks everything, sends everything packing, tries to demolish the room he is in, when the father’s voice is played; it is really an unbearable violation; something important happens. By contrast, we had a child for whom we feared everything, so unbelievable was his virulence. We expected him to break everything. Everyone had prepared to see what was going to happen; now, when the headphones were placed on him and the father’s voice was played, the child began to wail “Papa, Papa, Papa”.

Mme Tomatis

I should like to take up this problem of sonic birth, because we worked this year on the passage from intra-uterine listening to aerial listening. We obtained very interesting results. I believe we have some listeners who have questions to ask, especially with Dr Sarkissoff, who present precisely a refusal to come out, a refusal to enter the world of the grown-ups; one may insist on the sonic birth, that is to say that, if it is not carried out in a single session, it can be played 5 to 6 and even 20 times. The child is thus obliged to abandon this intra-uterine shell in which he was so comfortably installed, in order to become a human being.

I think we should all have an interest in working on the problem of sonic birth.

Prof. Tomatis

And perhaps in showing the child that there is not so much difference between one and the other, but simply a difference of impedance. We are always in the same universe; as I told you yesterday, I do not believe one ever leaves one’s mother; one is always in her belly, but the belly enlarges little by little, and one must realise to relive. I believe that the fact of regularly playing sonic birth tapes shows the child and the adult that it is not so dramatic to give birth; it is simply a continuation.

Mme Tomatis

I should like to take up the question of the truncated sibilants. The word “truncated” moreover seems a very bad term. I believe we shall have to call them the “filtered sibilants”. This “truncated” is really frustrating, is it not, Dr Sarkissoff? We are going to modify our language by changing however in the trainings these aggressive words such as “divorce”, “death”, “cemetery”, and so on. There are so many words that are more gratifying one to the other and also rich in high harmonics! One can all the same manage to find sibilants that give us at the same time the desire to live, and a little courage.

The Lisieux Centre should precisely furnish us with lists according to the child’s age, to take account of the vocabulary which is not so sure the same as that of the adult. If you, one and all, can make lists for us, we should be ready to receive them. This problem of “filtered sibilants” is very important on the plane of cortical recharge, of the analysis of high sounds, of lateralisation to the right and of the control of language.

Mr Dubard

We have played Gregorian chant on continuous disc, and some people have appreciated it enormously. I wonder, however, whether one might not envisage, when we have sufficiently perfected filters, filtering these Gregorian chants up to 8,000 Hz. We did this by error, and many people told us it was particularly calming.

Prof. Tomatis

The filtering cut depends on the voice of the monk who is singing. If we had ideal monks, we could still reach 8,000 Hz, obtain something, as in language; but it is difficult; from 7,000 Hz, the voice begins to be truncated.

Mr Dubard

They have nevertheless very high-pitched voices.

Prof. Tomatis

That a voice is very high-pitched does not mean it is very rich in harmonics; it may be very thin and give you the impression of being high, as is the case with the haute-contre. That may lead you to believe it is high, because you could not do the same, but the fact remains that when you analyse the voice on a cathode-ray tube, you obtain something mono-harmonic.

By contrast a Tibetan who appears to emit a very low sound can, with an impressive “OM”, give on the cathode-ray tube a sheaf of harmonics rising to 15,000 Hz. It is well to revisit this problem of so-called “sacred” sounds. Of course, it is a myth to think that a sound is sacred in itself. It is sacred because it puts the individual into such a state of cortical richness that it allows him to enter phases of meditation — those phases that require of the cortex a very important electrical charge. One certainly needs more than to sweep the floor; there is, at a given moment, an enormous charge, and these sounds, which are the fruit of millennia of experimentation, indeed give exceptional charges. How did the Ancients arrive at them? I do not know; they did not have cathode-ray tubes at their disposal but I think that, by tradition, these people have been able to bring us important elements.

The Tibetans have this characteristic: if they had not found the means to have elements of recharge through the sound and chant they practise permanently, there would not have been, at 4,000 metres altitude, a single being who really set himself to think; they would all have been destroyed, or else they would have sung the Tyrolean. There exists at a given moment a level one cannot reach without sonic recharge. If you one day hear a Tibetan recording — I have often heard them — you will observe that there is always noise, whether in the street or elsewhere; they make noise with pots and pans, or they speak, or they sing, or they laugh in order to be able to live; otherwise it is death.

Currently, Tibetan sounds are being played to Cistercian monks, which is absolutely aberrant; if one took a Tibetan and put him for a long time in a Benedictine abbey, after a certain time, attuning himself to the impedances of the place, he would sing Gregorian. Likewise, if one put a Benedictine for a long time on the Himalayas, one would observe a perceptible change in his voice, marking an adaptation of his ear and his phonation in terms of the new acoustic impedances of the place. When one is very practised in this phenomenon, one changes voice according to the room and according to the altitude. You will see how easy it is to speak Spanish in Spain, English in England, while it is very difficult to speak English in Spain. There are differences of acoustic impedances, of impedances of modification of the information of the place.

What is to be retained, among other things, in Mme Espinat’s communication is the suppleness with which the educational treatment must be directed. Although it rests on an overall schema, it must however be the object of a particular study for each case. It is not a universal panacea. It is not enough to put the subject on the rail and lock him in a cupboard. The unfolding of the sessions must be adapted to each individual.

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Source: Espinat (Mme), “Les programmations sous Oreille Électronique — Les différents types de bandes et leur utilisation” (followed by the discussion chaired by Mme Tomatis), in Actes du II^e Congrès International d’Audio-Psycho-Phonologie, Paris, 11-14 May 1972, pp. 188-205. Document digitised from the personal archives of Alfred Tomatis.