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At the end of the 1940s, when
examining workers suffering from occupational deafness,
Tomatis observed that the alterations which their ears
presented were always accompanied by a vocal deficiency.
Furthermore, at the same time, he acted as a consultant for
singers suffering from vocal problems .
When he performed audiogram tests on these singers, he noticed
that the latter presented exactly the same audiometric profile
as the one obtained with the industrial workers, and thus he
soon came to highlight the
fundamental relationship
according to which a subject can only reproduce vocally that
which he hears with accuracy and precision.
On the strength of these first discoveries, Tomatis created a
therapeutic device enabling to permanently restore full vocal
qualities to a deficient singer. This therapeutic device was
christened the
"Electronic Ear"
.
The Electronic Ear thus led to the establishment of three
fundamental principles, named the
"Tomatis laws"
which can be stated as follows:
-
The larynx can only produce the
harmonics which the ear hears (the voice only contains what
the ear hears). This first principle was christened the
"Tomatis
effect"
-
If, in a damaged ear, we
restore the possibility of correctly hearing lost or
compromised frequencies, then these frequencies are
instantaneously and unconsciously restored in vocal
emission.
-
When maintained for a certain
time, stimulation under the electronic ear permanently
modifies the subject's hearing and therefore his phonation
(Law of remanence).
Subsequently, Tomatis's research
led him to take an interest in foreign language learning. He
demonstrated that in linguistic analysis each language is
characterised by a particular frequential zone, called a
"Pass
band".
Then, at the end of the 1950s, Tomatis started considering the
question of the relationship between the ear and reading
abilities. In the following years he started to use his
technique to help children suffering from reading
difficulties.
At the beginning of the 1960s, another question came to occupy
his mind: that of the possible influence of sound on the human
being before birth.
It was in this period, marked by the question of the intra
uterine experience, when the Tomatis method, shifted its focus
from audio phonology (where the field of study concerns the
ear/voice relationship) to that of
"audio psycho phonology"
Tomatis then started to apply a
sound therapy based on filtered sounds which, according to him
reproduce the conditions of life in the womb and enable a
person in difficulty on a relational and communication level,
to revive emotions and memories concerning the first stages of
his development during the intra uterine experience.
Tomatis elaborated a complete sonic journey
whose role is to return a person, in a controlled and non
violent way, into the acoustic conditions of their intra
uterine experience, then, through this sonic journey, to bring
about genuine psychological births which he moreover called "sonic
births"
This sonic journey progressively determines a person's way of
listening, way of speaking and way of reading.
But there can be accidents along the way which will entail
disorders which are observable at one or other of these
stages, or at several at the same time.
The therapeutic method recommended by Tomatis therefore
consists in having a person experiencing difficulty in
communication, follow an ideal sonic pathway which, for
various reasons, he or she may have strayed from.
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