Customer Reviews

The Conscious Ear: My Life of Transformation Through Listening

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Tomatis book the conscious ear is an amazing book. Not only does he describe his life but also how he thinks and works. I thought I knew a lot about his sound therapy before reading the book, but after reading the book I almost feel like I had been in his studio. On the professional level his descriptions of the sound therapy are very detailed and the book makes you want to read more as well as his others books.

Let me say that the ideas of Tomatis have been exceptionally helpful to me in understanding my life and my interpersonal challenges. Many other body-oriented clinicians relate the cause of sensory limitations to difficult early experience and the effect of those sensory limitations to emotional difficulties later. But they start with the eye and vision! It is known that it is very difficult later in life to improve vision, perhaps that is because hearing needs to be improved! The ear controls eye movements and so is probably a factor in the development of myopia.

Like many innovators, Tomatis was not the clearest explainer of his ideas. If one wants just the ideas and not the story of their development, than Sollier's bookListening for Wellness: An Introduction to the Tomatis Method is probably a better choice.

One thing in this life-story is puzzling, Tomatis understood that his ideas were very controversial and brought him into conflict with mainstream medicine. However there seems to be a fog in his narrative about the details of this--perhaps it was just so painful.

Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis (1920-2001) was an internationally known French physician, psychologist, and educator; his alternative medicine theories of hearing and listening are known as the Tomatis method or Audio-Psycho-Phonology (APP). He has also written books such as The Ear and the Voice and The Ear and Language.

Here are some quotations from this 1991 book:

"(I) discovered that a good voice is one which enables the body of the listener to experience pleasing vibrations. To listen to someone else singing is to enter into a partnership of vibration. Why? Simply because producing sound makes the outside air vibrate. The istener who is situated within this air space is going to find himself 'sculpted' by the vibrations. To listen to someone playing, singing, or speaking is to let oneself be put in vibration with him." (Pg. 46-47)
"In the art of singing, it is the entire being that is involved." (Pg. 55)
"'Listen to me,' I objected. ' You forget something which for me is essential. I am not merely a laboratory worker. I am also a therapist. I don't want to turn my back on medicine.'" (Pg. 121)
"Thirty years ago when I spoke of audio-phonology, many people laughed derisively. Time has passed and I notice that it is now an accepted idea and sometimes even taught at a university. Some of its chief proponents now come from the ranks of those who sneered at me in the past, which does not stop them from continuing to treat me as a charlatan." (Pg. 173)
"I have a deep seated conviction that I was granted the grace to encounter the pangs of death so that I could have the experience while still alive of that descent into the abyss which has been so often described... Death does not exist. More accurately, that which we call by this name is only the last flight that lifts us up into the plentide of our being." (Pg. 196-197)

You don't have to agree with his conclusions to get the full benefit of going along on this man's journey of observation. He examines people, ideas, places, himself, scientific theories, laboratory equipment, history, language. . . everything and every non-thing about which you can think and observe, and almost always with the same child-like enthusiasm and ruthless honesty.

About the seller: The book arrived early, in excellent condition.