In the Beginning is the Sound
Article published in Santé Magazine circa 1982. Interviews with Dr Alfred Tomatis, then with Marie-Louise Aucher and Dr Michel Odent.
Many women who have carried a child within them had a presentiment of this. Science is confirming it: from the 4th month of gestation, the foetus reacts to external sounds; but well before this, the embryo is listening to the maternal voice. This relationship between mother and child renews our idea of the birth of the world… It throws a new light upon the biblical word: “In the beginning was the Word…”
A specialist in otorhinolaryngology and hearing, and the initiator of important discoveries in the domains of voice and language, Dr Alfred Tomatis has just published La Nuit utérine*, the balance sheet of 25 years of reflection. We interviewed him.*
First part — Interview with Dr Alfred Tomatis
SANTÉ MAGAZINE: Pregnant women often notice that their child moves at the precise moment when a loud external sound rings out — a chord of organs in church or the passage of a jet aircraft, for example. How is this to be explained?
Dr ALFRED TOMATIS: A few years ago, it was practically forbidden for a woman to think of expressing such an idea. And when I began to take interest in it around 1954-1956, I was surprised, in questioning them, to see how many of them had already spoken and sung for their future child. At present, it is known not only that sound can pass through the abdominal wall of the uterus, but also that the foetus is sensitive to it.
S.M.: From what age?
Dr A.T.: The inner ear and the middle ear are normally structured, completed from the fourth and a half month of intra-uterine life. Starting from this, one fine day it was decided — but it took me a long time to have it admitted — that the foetus hears from this period on. But what I have not been able to have admitted, and I think we must insist on this, is that if an organ is complete, becomes adult so early, this does not mean that it has not functioned before.
I claim that the embryo can hear things, even if it does not react to them completely. If it does not react, this means that its neurological structure does not yet allow it to attain its full functional power, and that its sensory responses are perhaps not yet balanced. But one must not therefore conclude that it does not record and store information.
S.M.: What leads you to advance such a claim?
Dr A.T.: I shall cite a case I report in my last book. It is the case of a child who was sunk in autism, a total withdrawal upon herself, a detachment from external reality. When we began to look after her, the father had very rapidly noticed that this child responded better to English than to French. What seemed evident to me was that the mother must have spoken English during the pregnancy. The father denied this at first. But, a few days later, he came to acknowledge that I was right: during the first three months of gestation, his wife had worked in an import-export company and had expressed herself only in English throughout this period. The embryo had already been marked, “imbued”. This means that the ear, being already in formation, sets a part of the nervous system also in formation, even if it is not very elaborate. The first nervous relays may have stored many things, and when the nervous system becomes more developed, one can see this whole ensemble project itself little by little into the cerebral tree which is being built. But there can be activity well before.
If one admits the auditory participation, and, why not, already the psychological participation of the foetus, one may raise the question of its beginnings and wonder about the responsibility of accepting abortion. As soon as one touches life, at whatever level, foetal or embryonic, it will always be a euthanasia.
S.M.: How can the mother’s voice reach the foetus’s ear?
Dr A.T.: In reality, we do not really know. For my part, I think that all the sounds of the mother’s voice pass through the spinal column: the whole bone vibrates and, the uterus pressing on the column at the posterior part, there is emission. At present, in any case, it is admitted that the maternal voice passes through, although this was not yet evident some time ago.
S.M.: Are some sounds more readily perceived than others?
Dr A.T.: The support of the mother’s voice — language — passes in the low frequencies, but the voice itself passes in the high frequencies. They are two different things. And what assures us of these possibilities of perceiving above all the mother’s voice is to see how the ear organises itself. It is built, true, like an adult ear from the four-and-a-half-month stage, but — and this is striking — it operates somewhat like a filter: it does not hear the low frequencies, only the high frequencies. In other words, all the internal noises of the mother are not perceived by the foetus, otherwise it would be a drama to live in there. Well, perhaps nature, which always does things well, has arranged that they should not be heard. This is a notion we forget, but it has been known to anatomists for very long.
S.M.: We should like to bring up another precise case which involves not only the listening of the foetus but also its memory. After a difficult birth, a newborn was in rather poor condition and remained very sullen for several hours, until his mother softly began to sing a tune she had sung throughout her pregnancy — in this instance “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” by J.-S. Bach. The baby then immediately responded with an expression of great satisfaction…
Dr A.T.: Two elements have played a role: it is certain that a rhythm imprints itself, and in the cantata to which you allude, there is an extraordinary rhythm, which almost triggers a relaxation, a kind of euphoria, of peace. And then, there is the other factor, capital, that of the mother’s voice.
I take another example: there exists a sign called the Thomas sign. Observe an infant a few days old. Anyone can speak, the baby does not move. If placed in a sitting position, the baby maintains it. But if ever the mother speaks, the baby tips to the side of the maternal voice. There is suddenly a kind of enormous attraction, of extraordinary magnetism triggered by the memory of this voice. Another example: when an infant is suckling, anyone can speak, this does not bother him at all. If by chance the mother’s voice makes itself heard, the infant stops and listens.
Experiments have been carried out that go further still, in animals: in a herd, if you connect at a given moment loudspeakers diffusing the voice of the generative mother, you see the animal, even though it was eating, head immediately towards the loudspeaker.
The imprint of the maternal voice is important, but in the case you cited to me, it is true, rhythm too may have played a role.
S.M.: You speak of rhythm. Can the infant recognise a particular melody?
Dr A.T.: No. He does not recognise it, because his ear does not yet function like that of the adult. It integrates by “packets” of sounds, of which it does not yet make analysis with ease. And very often, unfortunately, many ears will continue thereafter, if they do not wish to know, to perceive only by packets. This will later give children with listening difficulties: there will be no power of attention, no capacity for selectivity.
S.M.: How are the observations you have made to be received?
Dr A.T.: At the outset, thirteen years ago, to claim that the foetus hears, listens, expresses itself, brought me numerous censures from scientific and medical circles. But I remain in my line, and it is the others who are coming round. It is they, in fact, who have brought proofs of what I had said. Abroad, but also in France, this is increasingly admitted.
S.M.: More than in France?
Dr A.T.: Yes. I believe that one is not a prophet in one’s own land or family — my family is the medical family — so I shall perhaps still encounter some difficulties. By contrast, in North America for example, the whole psychiatric movement is at present in agreement with what I have done. And in any case, everywhere it is now admitted that the foetus hears, and that it hears its mother’s voice.
S.M.: Can certain sounds perceived by the foetus continue later to act in a particular way upon the child and even upon the adult?
Dr A.T.: Yes. Diffuse very amplified heart sounds: this can be very distressing. Conversely, the mother’s heart sounds have already been used in maternity wards to try to rouse children, premature ones notably, and this helps them a little. But not as much as the mother’s voice, which always invigorates them.
I can give you a lived example: we do much research on this, and any person coming to the Centre I direct comes to see us because he suffers from disorders of communication, of listening (not of hearing, that is different), of language, of inter-relation, of concentration, of memory. And in all these people, we re-establish a kind of primordial education which is to listen; then the subject takes charge of himself and re-enters the dynamic of life. Each time one carries out such an education, working with music, it is always Mozart that gives the most results, as well as certain Gregorian chants. If the subject hears the voice of his mother as in utero, thanks to a kind of filter, after he has already completed all the musical cursus, we trigger reactions that were still unknown beforehand. In other words, the imprint of the maternal voice represents something extraordinary.
S.M.: In view of all this, what advice would you give to parents expecting a child?
Dr A.T.: I would simply say: speak to, sing to your child throughout the pregnancy. The maternal voice is the most powerful structuring tool we know. It prepares for birth — and, beyond that, for the whole life of relation.
Second part — Experience in a hospital setting
Passionate about the interview Dr Alfred Tomatis had granted us, we went to meet Marie-Louise Aucher, opera singer, and Dr Michel Odent, the physician who, for more than three years, have been directing singing rehearsals for future mothers at the maternity hospital of Pithiviers. The more affectionate and relaxed atmosphere obtained in the department as a result of this practice, the flowering of the child at birth — less anxious, peaceful, euphoric — seem to confirm that the observations they have made there are striking. Marie-Louise Aucher is an opera singer; Dr Odent is an obstetrician.
SANTÉ MAGAZINE: Marie-Louise Aucher, what have you brought to the work you do with Dr Odent?
MARIE-LOUISE AUCHER: I observe that the children born of mothers who sang much during their pregnancy have the upper part of the body far more developed than the others on the neurological plane. They may notably acquire what is called “the pincer” — the aptitude to grasp the thumb with the other fingers — very rapidly, whereas normally this is something that comes much later. On the characterial plane, these children are softer, sleep well, seem happy to live, are very affectionate; they accommodate themselves to many situations where the others generally cry.
S.M.: How do you explain this?
M.-L. AUCHER: The ear is the organ whose mission is to analyse sounds, but in fact, it is the whole nervous system, it is the whole body that receives them. For the foetus, this is mediated (even before the formation of the ear, in the fifth month) by the vibrations of the mother’s body. Now, the four octaves that man and woman can sing one after the other have a repercussion upon the four zones of our body: one octave for the legs, one for the pelvis, one for the thorax and one for the head. High sounds go towards the upper part of the body, low sounds towards the lower. When the father, a professional singer or otherwise, often exercises his bass voice, one observes in the baby a relatively higher tonus of the lower limbs.
S.M.: Does the merely spoken voice not produce the same effect?
Dr ODENT: If it is the voice that sings, it is infinitely richer as information for the brain of the foetus than if it is only the voice that speaks, especially when one expresses oneself in French, since we are in very limited frequency bands. When one sings, one sweeps all the usable frequency ranges that our voice can emit. Certain languages — Russian, for example — use very rich bands. Well, everyone knows that the Russian mother tongue goes hand in hand with a very easy learning of foreign languages and with very pronounced musical gifts. Now, little Russians, from the earliest infancy and even in utero, perceive vibrations in very varied, very rich frequency bands. This is doubtless no accident!
S.M.: Does the baby recognise songs that his mother sang him while she was pregnant?
Dr ODENT: We have had the impression so. I think in particular of one very precise case. It took place twenty minutes after the birth. The father put on, very loudly, a record of a song by Eva, and at that moment, the baby immediately responded with a smile. Now, it happens that the mother, during her pregnancy, often listened to this record and sometimes even danced to the corresponding rhythm. Here, we really had an impression of attention, of response.
S.M.: Marie-Louise Aucher, how were you led to make these observations?
M.-L. AUCHER: I began as a concert soloist, an opera singer. I had noticed that, on listening to certain chords, I always experienced the same sensation in the body and in the same places: the chord of D, particularly, at the solar plexus, or the low G at the level of the knee. Other musicians affirmed to me that they felt the same thing; Schumann had moreover spoken of it. I therefore began to study systematically the repercussions of sounds upon my own nervous system and at the periphery of the body, as well as the incidences of the four octaves of which I have spoken. I thus rediscovered, without knowing it, the elementary tracing of acupuncture. From this research was born psychophony, which may be defined as a self-experimental method of physical and psychic harmony by means of the study of the spoken and sung voice.
S.M.: How were your observations received in the interested circles?
M.-L. AUCHER: I would rather tell you that both in the medical milieu and in that of the conservatoire, I made people laugh! Then I encountered highly qualified persons, capable of making the whole connection, of understanding, and who have helped me powerfully. There was Marcel Martiny, professor of biotypology at the École d’anthropologie. It is he who made me grasp what I was working on and the connections with acupuncture. Next, I had Professor Raoul Husson, who was holder of the chair of phoniatrics at the Sorbonne. I also had Paul Chauchard, professor of neurophysiology, who is honorary president of our Association française de psychophonie and who prefaced my book.
S.M.: Before coming to Pithiviers, had you already worked in conjunction with the medical milieu?
M.-L. AUCHER: Several hospitals came to offer me work to see what singing could do, first on severely mentally ill patients at Charenton. Then, at the Bichat hospital, I took charge of characteriological children and very mildly mentally ill children, and at Trousseau, of functional re-education. Finally, I encountered Doctor Leboyer who put me in contact with Doctor Odent. We work in the spirit of birth without violence, in the most affectionate and most relaxed climate possible. This in no way detracts from the technical quality of the care, I wish to emphasise, for many silly things have been said on this subject. For an easy birth, as painless as possible, the practice of this wonderful equilibrium provided by singing constitutes a preparation that is not only physical (by postures, breathings, contractions, vibrations, etc.) but also affective. It brings about a moral tonus which means that everyone is in a good mood at the hospital.
Dr ODENT: One of the starting points of our reflection is that formerly pregnant women felt the need to sing, lullabies in particular. So they emitted sounds themselves, whereas today, they listen to the radio, television, records. It is above all passive. The best way to avoid pathology during maternity, premature childbirth, etc., is the happy pregnancy!
S.M.: Do you have a particular repertoire?
M.-L. AUCHER: All traditional French melodies, specially composed tunes, but also beautiful modern songs.
S.M.: And to all the future mothers who cannot participate in your sessions, what do you advise?
M.-L. AUCHER: To sing as best they can, very often and in the family if possible. In parenthesis, listening to recorded music is not bad, on condition of avoiding excesses, either of vibratory intensity or of rhythmic paroxysm. “Disco” is not very suitable! And then, after the birth, may they continue to sing. The child, when he hears the voice of his father or his mother, acquires a much better ear, the taste for music and that for the human voice — which is, for the formation of his language and the equilibrium of his personality, fundamental.
— Santé Magazine*, ca. 1982. Interview with Dr Alfred Tomatis; interview with Marie-Louise Aucher and Dr Michel Odent.*