Listening Is Therapy
by Mitch Hall
(The following essay was originally published in The AHP Perspective, December, 1986. San Francisco: The Association for Humanistic Psychology, p. 8.)
The forthcoming English translation of the autobiography of Dr. Alfred Tomatis will make available to readers not literate in French an exciting story and probably the best written introduction to the theories, research and therapeutic modalities of this innovative benefactor. Publisher Mark Esterman (Great Ocean Publishers, 1823 North Lincoln Street, Arlington, Virginia 22207) expects the updated and revised English edition of L'Oreille et la Vie (Editions Robert Laffont, Paris, 1977) to be ready in the spring of 1987. The English title is still being decided. (2011 update: This autobiography is available in English under the title, The Conscious Ear: My Life of Transformation through Listening.
Tomatis has explored the development, implications and functioning of the human auditory channel with scientific precision, with inventiveness and above all with a passion to help those who have lost the ability to listen well and consequently to achieve their fullest potential in many realms.
The Tomatis Method applies to children with disrupted language development, learning problems, and motor function difficulties.
It helps adults with adjustment problems, mid-life change, tension, fatigue and depressive tendencies. The Method is also used to improve musical and singing ability, and in learning foreign languages.
Intrigued by my reading of the Tomatis autobiography, I recently made a study visit to the Listening Centre (99 Crowns Lane, Toronto, Ontario M5R 3P4, Canada; 416-922-1170; co-directors, Dr. Tim Gilmor and Paul Madaule), where the Tomatis Method has its foothold in North America for clinical applications. I saw a number of children and adolescents whose problems ranged from severe autism to learning disabilities. They were listening to auditory stimulation from the Electronic Ear, a highly sophisticated invention developed by Tomatis to transmit tape-recorded sounds in precisely defined and alternating frequency bands. The Electronic Ear can bolster sounds in needed frequency ranges to re-educate the ear that has lost the ability to attune itself to them. Likewise it can filter out specified frequencies.
Seeing all the children with their earphones attached by cords to the Electronic Ear, I was struck by an analogy that is not altogether arbitrary. Each cord was like an umbilicus linking the child's fetal listening potential to a source of nurturing sounds. Tomatis himself is an investigator into the pre-natal conditioning of the fetus, with special attention to the sonic environment in the womb. He has advanced persuasive arguments that at the age of four and a half months in utero the fetus is already listening to the filtered sound of its mother's voice, along with all the inner body sounds.
In a certain phase of the clinical applications of the Tomatis Method, the client is reintroduced through the Electronic Ear to the sonic conditions that had prevailed in the womb, to the specific frequencies heard there and, when possible, appropriately filtered recordings of the mother's voice. The client is then taken through a "sonic rebirth."
Tomatis has learned how to sequence the recordings so as to avoid any traumas and to maximize the therapeutic effects.
Clients listen to tapes first in a passive and later in an active phase. In the beginning they are encouraged to draw, paint, sculpt clay or build with blocks. The therapists gain valuable insights about the progression of the treatment through these forms of expression.
In the active phase, the clients are guided by the therapists to produce sounds, with much attention given to optimal posture and to the vibratory qualities of the body as our instrument for speech.
The work being carried on at The Listening Centre is bringing results and progress that continue even after completion of the program. Take the case of Johnny:*
Prior to the Tomatis program, the five-year-old boy was beset by many sensory-motor difficulties. He could not carry on a normal conversation with anyone. He was easily frustrated, and could not play beyond five or ten minutes with any friends without crying and getting mad. The assessment filter at The Listening Centre further found the boy's lateral dominance was "poorly established." An eight-week intensive course of listening therapy was successful. The boy's parents saw immediate changes for the better and long-range benefits in emotional, fine and gross motor, and social behavior. The boy's Stanford-Binet I.Q. rating rose from 94 at age five to 120 at age seven. From being hyperlexic, he became a fine reader well ahead of his age group.
Good news: We ought to be hearing more about The Tomatis Method in the future. A second clinical base has recently opened in Cleveland, Ohio, under the direction of Dr. Stephanie Neuman (Listening Development Center, 3737 Lander Road, Cleveland, Ohio 44124).
*as reported in a Listening Centre newsletter.