“The bars of the cage are the noise”
Clinical case reported by Dr Bernard Auriol — *La Clef des Sons*
This testimonial is taken from chapter 11, “Listening in the subjective present,” of La Clef des Sons — éléments de psychosonique by Dr Bernard Auriol (Éditions Érès, 1991), reproduced here with his kind permission. A physician and psychoanalyst, Bernard Auriol is one of the disciples and continuators of Alfred Tomatis. The case illustrates, in the first person, a central idea of audio-psycho-phonology: one can endure sound without listening to it, and the mother’s voice — heard “filtered,” as it was before birth — can reopen what had closed. “Daouba” is an assumed name; her words are reported just as she spoke them in session.
“This noise that I find intolerable, I feel inwardly compelled to listen to it.”
In brief — Daouba, a 38-year-old teacher, can no longer bear noise. An insomniac, perpetually on guard, she flees her own home. But beneath the acoustic complaint, another story surfaces: a childhood marked by ear infections, by an “overwhelming” mother who “could bear neither noise nor shouting,” and by the feeling of being “always judged.” In the course of a sonic cure in which she listens again to her mother’s voice filtered, Daouba discovers that her war against noise was, in reality, a war with that very voice.
“In body and in cries”
Daouba links her affliction to her history from the outset: “At the age of 2, I had very serious ear problems: an ear infection and mastoiditis. I was dyslexic. I had a lisp, and a teacher mocked me.” Then: “When I was 7 or 8, my mother became cantankerous and began to frighten me. When I think of her, I think of strictness, of moral duty, of right and wrong.” The noise, for its part, arose in adolescence: “It started to bother me in the first year of secondary school; I was 12.”
Ravaging sounds
The intolerance is not a mere annoyance: it is a break-in. “This noise that I find intolerable, I feel inwardly compelled to listen to it: I restrain my movements, I hold back my self-expression. I am terrified.” And this striking image: “At home, I am like a bird in a cage, with the impression that the bars of the cage are the noise.”
A crucial detail — and a very Tomatisian one: the noise does not persecute her everywhere. “From the moment a relationship is established between someone and me, the noises seem acceptable to me. If I am alone, they are unbearable.” Sound is intolerable only where the bond is missing.
Noise in its pure state
The therapist asks her to close her eyes: at once, the noise becomes body. “The hammer blows — I am the one who receives them… The footsteps, it is as if someone were walking on me. I am trampled, I am tortured. It is a struggle in which I am the weaker one.” And the confession that tips everything over: “I have the feeling of being defenceless, and that they penetrate me like water, like the waves of the sea wiping the slate clean over the sand.”
“It’s my mother’s fault”
The thread draws taut. “It is my perpetual dread of others that translates into the fear of noise.” Then, without detour: “The noise that bothers me, I associate with my mother’s presence. I then have the impression of being crushed, annihilated, of no longer being able to think. The noise bothers me only at home, and it is always linked, symbolically, to my mother.” She remembers: her mother “could bear neither noise nor shouting; everything had to be done very softly. I was very afraid of her rages.”
The filtered voice — a “sonic birth”
Then comes the heart of the work. Daouba undergoes a sonic cure with the recorded voice of her mother, passed through the high-frequency filter — the voice as the ear perceives it before birth. On the day of what Auriol calls the “sonic birth,” she writes: “I perceive her as a mother, through the filtered voice: a gentle sensation, an agreeable well-being. The moment the voice ceases to be filtered, the spectre of moral constraint and culture rises up before me.” The same voice, depending on whether it is filtered or not, soothes or crushes — living proof that what wounds is not the sound, but what it carries.
Daouba also notes a link that Tomatis would not have disowned, between the jaw, listening and understanding: “When I have tension in my jaw, I understand nothing of an African language that I have nonetheless learned well. When I relax, I hear it better.”
“Hush!”
The therapist finally remarks on the timbre of her voice — plaintive, “as if she were always being scolded.” Daouba agrees: “I know that my voice, at times, is inaudible. My daughter’s too. I have the sensation of being always judged. This voice is connected to my mother and her crushing upbringing.” The loop closes: the ear that shuts itself to noise, the voice that fades, the fear of the other — one and the same story, in which sound was only the messenger.
Original text: Bernard Auriol, La Clef des Sons — éléments de psychosonique, Érès, 1991, ch. 11. To be read in full on the author’s site. On the same idea in Tomatis — the filtered maternal voice and prenatal listening — see also Le Musée and the lectures in the Archives.