Anzieu, The Sound Image of The Self

Anzieu, D. (1979). The Sound Image of the Self. Int. R. Psycho-Anal., 6:23-36.
(1979 ). International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 6 :23 -36
The Sound Image of the Self

Didier Anzieu
It is my intention in this paper to advance further the psychoanalytical considerations which I have already set out on
the anaclisis of narcissism and masochism, and on the functions of the skin. These have led me to formulate the
hypothesis of a skin-self (Anzieu, 1968), (1974a), (1974b). I have upheld the hypothesis that the ego is constituted as a
containing envelope, a protective barrier and a filter of exchanges, as a result of proprioceptive and epidermal sensations
and the internalization of skin identifications. First of all, however, I would like to step back and discuss the constitution of
the self as a pre-individual psychic whole, endowed with an outline of unity and identity which existed prior to the
establishment of the borders, limits and space of the ego.
During the past few decades, three important notions have been contributed by English-speaking psychoanalysts.
Bion (1965) shows that the change from 'non-thinking' to 'thinking', or from beta to alpha 'elements', is based on the
effects of a capacity that the infant must experience if he is to develop psychically. It is the capacity of the mother's
breast to 'contain' sensations, (particularly coenaesthesic and kinaesthesic), affects and memory traces (or mental
images) which are then imprinted in the new-born psyche. The container-breast halts the aggressive-destructive retro-
projection of expelled and scattered bits of the self. This retro-projection constitutes the original psychotic nucleus of the
personality.
Kohut (1971) tries to differentiate between two antagonistic—alternative and complementary—movements: one,
where the self is constituted by 'mirroring' itself in objects with which it accomplished a partial narcissistic fusion ('self-
objects'); and the other, where the self accomplishes a 'grandiose' fusion with an ideal object.
Lacan (1949) describes the mirror-stage in which the ego constitutes itself as other based on the model of a mirror
image of the whole, unified body. Winnicott (1967) speaks of an earlier phase in which the mother's face provides the
first mirror for the child who then creates his self according to what she reflects back to him.
Both Winnicott and Lacan accentuate the visual signals. I, however, would like to reveal the existence, at an even
earlier stage, of a sound mirror or of an audio-phonic skin, and what its function is with regard to the psychic apparatus
and the acquisition of the capacity to signify and symbolize (Bick, 1968) ; (Montagu, 1971) ; (Lacombe, 1959) ; (Sami-
Ali, 1969) ; (Rosolato, 1969).
First, I shall give excerpts taken from two sessions of analysis. I shall call the patient Marsyas, as a tribute to the
silenus who invented the flute and provoked Apollo, god of the lyre, into a contest as to who could produce the most
beautiful music. The god Apollo won by a hair's breadth and, in accordance with their contract, inflicted on the loser the
punishment of his choice. He hung him on a pine tree and skinned him completely.
This particular patient has been in analysis for several years. Before a negative therapeutic reaction set in, he used
to lie on the couch; now we face each other during the hourly sessions. As a result of this new arrangement, analytic
work started again and produced some improvements in the life of the patient, although he still has a hard time
supporting the interruptions caused by holidays.
The session I am about to speak of is the first
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This paper was originally published under the title 'L'enveloppe sonore du Soi', in La Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse, numero 13,
printemps 1976, Paris. pp. 161–80.
Translated by Monique Meloche and edited with the help of Judith Rotstein and Clifford Scott.
Copyright © Didier Anzieu
WARNING! This text is printed for the personal use of the subscriber to PEP Web and is copyright to the Journal in which it originally appeared.
It is illegal to copy, distribute or circulate it in any form whatsoever.
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one after the spring holidays. Marsyas talked about feeling empty rather than depressed. During the past few days while
he had been resuming his professional duties, he had felt distant from others. He thought that I also appeared to be far
away; that he had lost me. He then realized that the two long periods of depression he experienced during his analysis
both happened during the long holidays, although one of them followed a professional failure which greatly affected him.
At Easter, the occasion to go away for a long weekend had presented itself. He went south and stayed in a
comfortable hotel with a heated swimming pool by a magnificent sea. He greatly enjoys both swimming and excursions.
However, nothing went well. He did not get along with the other people, friends and colleagues of both sexes, whom he
already knew from several weekends spent together. He felt neglected, abandoned and rejected. His wife had been
obliged to stay at home with a convalescing child. During walks he tired easily, but it was mainly in the course of group
activities at the swimming pool that everything went from bad to worse. He became breathless. He could not find the
right rhythm, while his movements became more and more uncoordinated. He was afraid of diving. The sensations
caused by being wet made it unpleasant for him to get into the water. In spite of the sunshine, he shivered. Twice, while
walking near the edge of the pool, he slipped on the wet tiles and banged his head quite painfully.
While I was listening to this, I thought of Bowlby's (1969) attachment instinct and of the ideas I had been entertaining
of a skin-self. Perhaps the reason Marsyas comes to these sessions is not so much to be fed by me, which is something
I had felt I was doing ever since we made our new arrangement, but rather to be carried and warmed by me; to be
manipulated and, through the exercise, to regain the potential offered by his body and mind.
For the first time I started talking to him of his body as a volume in space, as a source of sensation and of
movement (like the fear of falling). Apart from polite approval, however, I received no reaction from Marsyas. I then
decided to ask him directly: to tell me not how he was fed, but how he was held by his mother when he was little. He
immediately brought up a memory he had already mentioned a few times, one his mother liked to talk about. Not long
after his birth, his mother, already over-burdened by four children (an older son and three daughters) felt herself caught
between the needs of Marsyas and those of her youngest daughter who was then a year old and seriously ill. She
entrusted him to the care of a maid who turned out to be better at domestic jobs than at child care. The mother always
made a point of breast-feeding him for she had been very pleased with his birth. She fed him generously, but very
rapidly, and as soon as feeding time was over she gave him back to the maid and then turned her attention to her other
child who had been ill for so long that, at one time, there was fear for her life. Marsyas fed greedily (this behaviour
carried over into adulthood in the rapid attainment of orgasm without much loving accompaniment). Between these visits
he was watched over, yet neglected, by the maid who was a stern, elderly single woman with strong principles and an
equally strong superego. She worked hard, out of a sense of duty, and seemed not to derive any pleasure from anything
else. Her relationship with her employer was of the sado-masochistic type. Her only interest in Marsyas' body was to
train him prematurely, otherwise she provided only mechanical care. She was not interested in his body for itself and
neither touched nor played with him. Marsyas felt forsaken and was in a passive and apathetic state. After a few
months, his lack of response became apparent to the maid and she told the mother that he did not hear well and was
born retarded. Appalled by this information, the mother grabbed Marsyas, shook him and moved him about, thus
stimulating him—the result was that he looked, smiled and babbled to his mother's satisfaction, and she in turn felt
reassured about his normality. On a number of occasions she verified this and soon after changed maids.
Using this narrative as a base I will bring together several elements which I told Marsyas over a period of time. He
waits for his sessions with me in the same way he did the 'feeding-visits' of his mother. He is anxious at the thought of
my being late or of cancelling a session, just as he feared his mother would not
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come to see him any more and he would waste away like his sister. This prompted me to offer him replacement
appointments to compensate for the coming legal holidays when I would not be able to see him.
The explanation I had conceived of at the beginning of the session was confirmed; he was adequately fed, but he
expected me to provide what the maid did not—stimulation to his psyche. There had been moments of such poverty in
his inner life that I was led to believe that he had undergone a period of psychic death. Since the time he started sitting
during sessions, we engaged in dialogue more frequently and exchanged important facial expressions and gestures.
Through these exchanges, although there was the physical distance between us, it was as if I were picking him up,
warming him, making him move and if necessary shaking him until he acts, reacts and makes a noise. I told this to him,
but in doing so did not reveal that I was thus exercising the two functions that Winnicott (1941) assigns to a good-
enough environment: the handling or appropriate management of the child's body, and the function of the face as the
primitive mirror in which the child learns to be by seeing what he is for his mother, and through her expression gains a
reflection of what he feels.
Thirdly, I had come to a better understanding of what Marsyas' body image is. For his mother, he was a digestive
tube, hyper-cathected and eroticized at both ends. (Even the smallest emotion triggers off a violent need to urinate, and
one of his fears is to urinate during intercourse.) The maid, on the other hand, neither cathected his body as a global
mass of flesh, nor as a volume or movement. Hence the often-felt anxiety of empty space which, however, he did not
mention until late in the analysis.
We had a long, active and warm verbal exchange on these three themes. Upon leaving, instead of the usual flaccid
handshake, he pressed my hand firmly. My countertransference feelings were mainly of narcissistic satisfaction over
thorough work.
At our next session a few days later I was greatly disappointed for Marsyas was depressed and, much to my
surprise, started by complaining about the last session which he considered to have been negative, while to me, it
appeared to have been so enriching for him (and for me in my understanding of him). A feeling of disappointment similar
to his arose in me, but of course, I did not let him know. My thoughts were: he takes one step forward and two
backwards; he denies the progress he is making; I am tempted to give up. But then I took hold of myself and tried to
understand. What I comprehended was that when he is winning on one side, he is afraid of losing on another. I spoke of,
and thus reminded him of, the 'all or nothing' principle which seems to govern his inner life. (It is necessary for the
analyst to repeat an interpretation when it concerns the functioning of the psychotic part of the personality which is itself
also subject to repetition and therefore easily escapes insight—for a well-prepared and well-timed interpretation can
bring to resolution a neurotic process.) I pointed out that during the last session he had found, through me, the bodily
contact he had missed with his nurse; this immediately aroused in him the feeling that he had, however, lost the other
type of contact, the one more usual between us—as between himself and his mother—of brief and intense feeding. This
interpretation was readily confirmed and he resumed psychoanalytic work. He connected this alternation between losses
to his longstanding fear—which he never expressed clearly—of analysis taking something away from him, not in the
sense of castration, he added spontaneously, but in that it deprives him of his mental capacities. This particular remark
of his was both judicious and fundamental. The anxiety concerning loss was not related to castration, as it is in the loss
of the love-object or the organ of pleasure. Any interpretation made in terms of object libido, Oedipus fantasies and pre-
oedipal fixations would have been erroneous and even persecutory. Marsyas' problem concerned a deficit in his
narcissistic libido and the after-effects of the failure of his primitive environment to satisfy the needs of his ego (as these
needs are distinguished by Winnicott (1967) from those of the body). But where in this sequence can one place the
needs of the ego?
The renewed therapeutic alliance between Marsyas and myself allowed for the continuation
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of the analysis and, in consequence, another dimension of his susceptibility to frustration, namely that of his narcissistic
wound, was uncovered. What he was unable to obtain from his mother was not compensated for when obtained from
someone else—his mother should have given it to him. A continuous and unfinished trial went on in his mind. His mother
and his analyst should finally admit the wrongs they had done him!
Contrary to Spitz's cases of hospitalism, Marsyas was not psychotic, for unlike them, his mental functioning was
more or less maintained during childhood. There was always someone to fulfil the role of mother; a brother, sisters, a
succession of maids and priests, and, mentioned for the first time during these sessions, a neighbour whom he visited
almost every day from the time he first could talk until he started attending school. He talked a great deal with her, more
freely than he could with his mother who was both too busy to do so and could only accept that which conformed to her
moral code and ideal of the perfect little boy. One of Marsyas' comments was that talking with me is sometimes like
talking with the neighbour and at other times like talking with his mother.
The discussion then turned back to his relationship with me: he felt that I gave him a lot, he found more pleasure in
being alive and would not miss a session for anything in the world. But an important obstacle still existed between us;
often, he neither understood nor remembered what I was telling him. At the session previous to the one where this came
up, it became quite acute—he did not even 'hear' me in the acoustical sense of the word. Furthermore, if an interesting
idea came to him about his problems, he was unable to communicate it to me, but remained mute, his mind empty.
This resistance caught me unawares. I had believed his thinking capacities to be more developed. At this point I
made a connexion, and asked him: When he was little, how did his mother talk to him? He went on to describe a
situation of which he had not said a single word despite years of analysis, and which later that same evening I had
summarized to myself, while making notes, as a 'negative bath of words'.
His mother's voice had hoarse and rough intonations, corresponding to frequent abrupt and unpredictable mood
swings. The relation of the baby Marsyas to the maternal melody, as carrier of global sense, was thus interrupted, cut
up, as the maid's mechanical care was interspersed and cut up by the intense and gratifying body exchange with his
mother during feedings. In this way, the two main infrastructures of the signified—namely, the infralinguistic one
concerning care and games of the body, and the prelinguistic one concerning the global listening to phonemes—were
both affected by the same disturbance.
On the other hand, Marsyas' mother was incapable of adequately expressing what she felt, wished to happen or
experienced internally. Because of this, she was a cause of either irritation or irony for those in her environment. In all
probability, she was unable to intuit the feelings of the members of her family nor help in their expression. She had been
unable to talk to her youngest son in a language through which he could recognize himself. From this arose Marsyas'
impression of having to deal both with his mother and me in an alien tongue.
These two sessions served to confirm my idea that the early deprivation of ego needs means that the patient lacks
sufficient stimulation by others of some of his psychic functions. In a good-enough environment, this hetero-stimulation
leads, through internalization, to the auto-stimulation of these same functions. Therefore the aims of analysis in such a
case are: (a) to provide this hetero-stimulation through appropriate changes in the psychoanalytic arrangements; through
the determination of the analyst to symbolize on behalf of the patient every time the latter has a blank mind, that is, is
invaded by psychic death; (b) to bring out, in the transference, the old splits in the self as well as any uncertainties as to
the coherence and limits of the ego, so that both parties can work on them analytically. In any case, the deeply deprived,
but non-neurotic, patient is extremely dissatisfied with his analyst and with analysis; however, as a consequence of the
therapeutic alliance between the authentic part of the self and the analyst, he will slowly begin to know, through his
dissatisfaction, certain precise, specific deficits which can be named, limited and overcome in a new and
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facilitating environment.
At this point, it is well to summarize the known facts about hearing and phonation in infants, 1 which all lead to the
following conclusion; the baby is linked to his parents through a real audio-phonic communication system. Because it
produces the necessary 'formants' for communication, the buccopharyangeal cavity is very easily controlled right at the
beginning of mental activity, and plays an essential role in the expansion of emotions (Herren, 1971) ; (Oleron, 1976).
Wolf (1963), 1966 analysed the acoustic parameters in infants of less than three weeks. He discriminated four
structurally and functionally different cries: (a) the cry of hunger, (b) the cry of anger (at being undressed, for example),
(c) the cry of pain caused by an external agent (like having blood drawn from a heel), or by an internal event, and (d) the
cry in reaction to frustration (as when an actively-sucked nipple is withdrawn). These four cries each have a specific
duration of frequency, time sequence and spectrographic characteristics.
The cry of hunger, though not necessarily linked with that physiological state, appears to be fundamental; it always
follows the other three which appear to be only variations of it. All of these cries are pure physiological reflexes.
They produce in mothers, who at an early stage try to tell them apart, specific reactions which all have the same
goal of stopping the cry—although mothers do react differently according to their character and experience. The best
means of extinguishing the cry, however, is the voice of the mother: from the end of the second week it stops the baby's
screams much more effectively than any other sound or even the visual presence of the human face. As of the third
week, in a normal family environment, one begins to see 'the pseudo-cry of distress geared to getting attention' (Wolff,
1969). It consists of wails ending in cries; the physical structure of this cry is very different from the other four. It is the
first intentional sound made, in fact, the first communication. At five weeks the infant can distinguish the mother's voice
from other voices, while it still cannot distinguish her face from other faces. So it is that well within the first few months
infants begin to decode the expressive value of the adults' acoustic intervention. For the infant it is its first circular
reaction, and appears well before those concerning sight and psychomotricity. It is the beginning, and possibly the
prototype, of all future discriminatory learning.
Between three and six months, the infant babbles—he plays with the sounds he makes. First there is 'clucking,
smacking, croaking' (Ombredane, 1935). Then he progressively tries to differentiate, to produce voluntarily and to
possess, from among the great varieties of phonemes, those that are constituents of his mother tongue. He thus acquires
what the linguist Martinet (1967) calls the secondary articulation of words (the articulation of the signified into precise
sounds or into special sound combinations). At this time, it is uncertain among researchers as to how this acquisition is
actually made. It is not so certain today as was once believed, that the child uses a plurality of phonetic structures more
expansive than the one used in the spoken language by the adults of his environment. Some authors believe that infants
spontaneously use all possible sounds and then slowly narrow them down to those that make up their environmental
sound system. Other authors maintain, on the contrary, that sounds at this stage are imitations and are increased
progressively.
If we leave aside the frequency of appearance of vowels and consonants, labials or gutturals, one thing remains that
is certain; at around three months, following the maturation of the fovea, the circular visual-motor reaction takes place—
the child reaches out towards the bottle, but it also reaches out towards the mother's voice! While, at this stage, the
child can only copy the gestures he sees himself making such as those of his hands and feet, the audiophonological
imitation is much more diversified. In babbling, the infant imitates the sounds another makes as much as he imitates his
own sounds, for instance, at three months one can already hear imitative cries.
There are two experiments worth relating
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1 From the moment of birth on, the cry is the most characteristic sound made by the baby. Excluded are the specific sounds made
by coughing, eating and the digestive tract. These literally transform the body into a sound box and are disturbing since their origin
is unknown.
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here. It is difficult to know what the infant hears, since there are no observable signs that he has indeed heard.
McCaffrey (1967) and Moffit (1968) have solved this methodological problem in an elegant way: first they habituated a
number of ten-week old babies to certain phonetic signals that the babies could reproduce; then they took their
electrocardiographs while either reduced or normal signals belonging to the adult repertory were presented to them. The
results show that infants possess a perceptual richness much greater than their capacity for phonetic emission, just as a
few months later, their understanding of semantics will be superior to their elocution.
Butterfield (1968) has found another way of solving the problem: babies who are only a few days old will suck more
actively during feeding, with music, than without. As is evident from their eagerness in sucking, some babies might be
said to prefer a classical to a popular melody or song! After a few exercises of this kind, one hour before their meal and
while wide awake—therefore independent of the gratification provided by feeding—these melodophilic babies were able
to start or stop the recorded music which was connected to the empty bottle at their disposal. These findings confirm
Bowlby's (1969) theory which states that there is a primary attachment instinct functioning simultaneously with, and
independently of, the oral sexual instinct. But Butterfield also adds an important addition or correction: that mental
capacities are first applied to material of an acoustical nature. I would like to add that it is probably olfactory in nature
also, but in that case, a scientific demonstration would be methodologically more difficult to carry out and has not as yet
been attempted. This does away with Wallon's (1945) views, which have prevailed in France for the last fifty years, and
according to which social communication and mental representation are based on the differentiations of gestures and
mimicry. It appears that babies are sensitive to feedback from the environment at a much more precocious level than
previously thought. Such feedback is audio-phonological in nature and mainly concerns, first, cries and then
vocalizations, with obvious functional and morphological analogies existing between the two. These form the basis for
the learning of semiological behaviour. In other words, the acquisition of prelinguistic meaning (that of cries and then of
prattling) precedes that of infralinguistic meaning (that of mimicry and gestures).
Of course, chronological succession does not imply a structural relationship: the vocal-motor and visual-motor
coordinates each possess their own relative autonomy and specificity: the former sets the stage for the acquisition of
secondary articulation (that of signifieds into sounds), whereas the latter sets the stage for primary articulation (that of
signifieds into signifiers). One can therefore be fairly safe in thinking that in the second year of life, both the development
of the linguistic function and the start of appropriation of the mother tongue require that the child tolerate the structural
difference between vocal communication and gestural communication and that he overcome this difference by the
creation of a more complex and abstract symbolical structure. Nevertheless, the first problem that a budding intelligence
is required to solve is that of a differential organization of bodily noises, cries and phonemes. During the first year of life
phonetic behaviour is a primary factor in mental development.
Here is one last example. Between eight and eleven months, there is a slowing down of vocal activities, imitation of
heard-forms (formes entendues) as well as frequency of prattling. It is also at this age that the child becomes afraid of
unknown faces and voices. At around ten months, when he has mastered the thumb-index opposition, he is able to
reproduce, in the presence of an outside model, gestures that he cannot see himself doing. He is also able to produce
representations of perceived objects or events outside of his perceptual field. At the same time, however, and perhaps as
a consequence of this ability, he analyses the phono-behaviour of others more than his own. Friedlander (1968) gained
proof for this by using the following device. To the side of the playpen of an eleven-month old child he attached a
double-track tape of two programmes, a time-frequency recorder and a two-button command device allowing the child to
use either one or the other of the sound programmes. The results were as follows: (1)
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The child preferred an unknown, deep-toned and sonorous voice to his mother's when her voice had been altered to
monochord by a device; but he preferred his mother's voice when he recognized it as such, that is, when its invariants
had been discovered. (2) The child preferred a familiar and natural-sounding voice, using known words, to an unknown
voice using an unfamiliar vocabulary; but after a few manipulations the latter voice was preferred. (3) The child at first
preferred a short and repetitively-articulated programme to a long one containing a great deal of information; after a few
manipulations however he preferred the latter.
At this age, a child is capable of auto-stimulation by choosing material that is unfamiliar to him. Thus he
demonstrates, through his activity, the ability to make differentiations and comparisons concerning vocal and phonematic
characteristics as well as lexical material.
Turning to Freud (1950) in this regard, we note that although reference to a 'bath of words' is not to be found in his
works, the cry of the child plays a certain role in his first theory. In the first structure of the psychic apparatus 'the reflex
discharge comes about because every movement, through its subsidiary results, becomes the occasion for fresh sensory
excitations (from the skin and muscles) which give rise to a motor [kinaesthetic] image, (p. 318). Later (Freud, 1900) 'the
exigencies of life confront it first in the form of the major somatic needs. The excitations produced by internal needs seek
discharge in movement, which may be described as an "internal change" or an "expression of emotion". A hungry baby
screams or kicks helplessly' (p. 565). On the one hand, therefore, the cry is an auto-plastic modification and not an
alloplastic one, and on the other hand, the motor discharge it carries out is also heard by the environment as a signal to
which that environment usually responds. The alloplastic change is then affected because of the environment, and 'an
experience of satisfaction can be achieved which puts an end to the internal stimulus' (1900, p. 565). While it provides a
means of discharge, the cry also becomes the prototype of the demand: 'In this way, the path of discharge acquires a
secondary function of the highest importance, that of communication' (Freud, 1950, p. 318). In this way, a second
structure of the psychic apparatus is formed in which meaning exists at the elementary level of the signal, and is part of
the circular interaction with the environment. Freud did not advance very far in the clinical and technical applications of
this second structure, that is, in the psychopathology that results from deficiencies in the environment at this stage of
development. Nonetheless, because of his strictness and insight, he foresaw a place for it in his theory, and this allowed
his successors to work on its further development. Moreover, Freud (1950) linked the cry not only to the experience of
satisfaction but also to the test of pain, and then he further analysed its effect on communication: 'Other perceptions of
the object too—if, for instance, he screams—will awaken the memory of his [the subject's] own screaming and at the
same time of his own experiences of pain. Thus the complex of the fellow human-being falls apart into two components,
of which one makes an impression by its constant structure and stays together as a thing, while the other can be
understood by the activity of memory—that is, can be traced back to information from [the subject's] own body' (p. 331).
At this second level of mental functioning, it can be supposed that the child identifies with the mother on the basis of
phenomenological corporality. Since Freud, it is from this point that studies were initiated on the psychopathological
consequences of deficiencies in identification. The case of Marsyas has furnished a further example.
The level of complexity of the psychic apparatus progresses, as is known, from a wish to a memory image of the
satisfying object. This image is mainly visual or motor and is no longer related to the registering of sound; it is the basis
for the primary psychic process the aim of which is a hallucinatory need satisfaction; it is an experience in self-
satisfaction, as opposed to the previous type of satisfaction which depended on the environment. The association
between mental images and instinctual activities constitutes a form of symbolization (that is, it is more than a simple
signal). This third structure of the psychic apparatus in turn becomes more
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complex as the articulation of verbal traces (or word-representations) to thing-representations renders possible thought
and secondary psychic processes. It is of interest to note that Freud (1950) himself described what I shall call the zero
level of this articulation—the articulation of sounds together with perceptions: 'In the first place, there are objects—
perceptions—that make one scream, because they arouse pain; and it turns out as an immensely important fact that this
association of a sound (which arouses motor images of one's own as well) with a perceptual [image], which is composite
apart from this, emphasizes the object as a hostile one and serves to direct attention to the perceptual [image]. When
otherwise, owing to pain, one has received no good indication of the quality of the object, the information of one's own
scream serves to characterize the object' (p. 366). Therefore our first conscious memories are of a painful nature. 'There
are other objects, which constantly produce certain sounds—in whose perceptual complex, that is, a sound, plays a part.
In virtue of the trend towards imitation, which emerges during judging, it is possible to find the information of movement
attaching to this sound image' (p. 367). Prolonging the imitation of what is now called a signified (that is pronounced by
the environment), the subject now voluntarily associates sounds to perceptions; thus, 'This association is a means of
making memories that arouse unpleasure conscious and objects of attention: the first class of conscious memories has
been created. Not much is now needed in order to invent speech.' (1950, p. 366–7.) 25 years later, Freud (1923) again
took up the same analysis and demonstrated that his views on the decisive role of verbal traces in the conscious future
had not been altered by the elaboration of the second topic: 'Verbal residues are derived primarily from auditory
perceptions, so that the system preconscious has, as it were, a special sensory source. The visual components of word-
presentations are secondary, acquired through reading, and may to begin with be left on one side; so may the motor
images of words, which, except with deaf-mutes, play the part of auxiliary indications. In essence a word is after all the
mnemic residue of a word that has been heard' (p. 20–1).
However, he cautiously suggests a new hypothesis, that of the acoustic origin of the superego: 'Having regard, now,
to the importance we have ascribed to preconscious verbal residues in the ego, the question arises whether it can be
the case that the superego, in so far as it is unconscious, consists in such word-representations and, if it does not, what
else it consists in. Our tentative answer will be that it is impossible for the superego as for the ego to disclaim its origin
from things heard; for it is a part of the ego and remains accessible to consciousness by way of these word-
presentations (concepts, abstractions). But the cathectic energy does not reach these contents of the superego from
2
auditory perception (instruction or reading) but from sources in the id.' 2
I can now make my position clear as to the limits of my accord with Freud and to the additions that should be made
to his work.
1. With the learning of the first articulation of language (assimilation of rules as to lexical use, grammar and
syntax), the archaic-sadistic superego acquires the regulating character of thinking and behaviour.
2. Previous to the occurrence of the above, the ego had developed as a relatively autonomous structure by
using the skin boundary as the basis for acquiring the secondary articulation (fixation of the flow of those
vocal sounds to phonemes which are fundamental to the mother tongue) as well as establishing the 'outside'
status of the object.
3. Moreover, as a result of the experience of the 'sound bath' the self emerges as an envelope of sound
(concomitant to the self as a suckling). This bath of sound pre-figures the skin-self, with one half of its
double face turned to the inside and the other half to the outside. Since the sound envelope is composed of
sounds coming alternatively both from the environment and the baby, this combination of sounds produces:
(a) a common space-volume which
—————————————
2 The Ego and the Id. 1923. p. 52–3. The problems of voice and audition have not much interested Freud's comentators. As a
result, the editors of the S.E. have not included in their index the terms: voice, sound, audition. They have rather only maintained
the references to screaming and to similarities of sounds in slips of the tongue and play on words. There is still research to be
done on Freud's views on sound.
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permits of a bilateral exchange (whereas sucking and elimination constitute only a one-way flow) (b) a primary
image (spatio-auditive) of the immanent body, and (c) a link of actual fused reality with the mother (without
which the imagined fusion with her later on would not be possible).
I shall now draw on supplementary evidence supplied by the gadgets of technology and the inventiveness of
mythology and science fiction.
In France, recently, children suffering from language problems have been placed in a sound bath before any
attempts at re-education—this 'treatment' is called 'semiophonie' (Beller, 1973). The subject is confined within a
spacious and soundproof cabin which contains a microphone and hearing helmet—a real 'phantasmic egg' in which he
can curl up and regress narcissistically. During the first phase—which is purely passive—he can play freely (drawings,
puzzles, etc.) while listening to filtered music, rich in high harmonics, for half an hour. During the next half hour, he
listens to a pre-recorded and filtered voice. He is thus submitted to a sound bath reduced to rhythm, melody and
inflection. The second phase deals with the secondary articulation. After listening to filtered music, the subject must then
participate actively by repeating pre-recorded signifieds that have also been filtered so as to make the voice perfectly
distinct and audible while favouring a scale of high harmonics; at the same moment that he is repeating a word, the
subject hears himself in the earphones—and discovers his own voice by auditory feedback. During the next and more
simple phase, the previous musical bath as well as the filtered sounds are removed, and the repeating of sentences in
story form begins. If the child repeats poorly, if he voluntarily adds whimsical or rude variants, no notice is taken and he
is of course not reprimanded. He is also allowed to continue drawing while listening and talking. After all, in order to
learn a code, one must be free both to play with it as well as transgress it. 'Thus, while believing he is conversing with
somebody, the child rapidly learns to converse with himself; with this other part of himself which he has belittled—
precisely that part which he has projected on to others, thus alienating all possibility of a real dialogue.' (Beller, 1973, p.
64.)
Unfortunately, the author has maintained a strictly didactic position, leaving out elements of transference and
interpretation as well as the spotting and understanding of the role of the environment in the development of linguistic
'deficiencies' in the child. At best, he has tried to turn the process into a sort of 'curing machine'. His intuition however
proves to have borne fruitful results. 'In the first phase of this re-education—the so-called passive phase—when exterior
sounds are filtered to a point of becoming non-significant, it could be said that the subject is experiencing pleasant
feelings of strangeness … This emotion leads to a state of elation, felt in the subject himself, that is, in the
representation he has of himself.' (Beller, 1973, p. 75.)
This strangeness is disturbing only when the environment does not 'hold' (in Bion's sense) the psychic life of the
subject. The little child is introduced into the world of illusion through the other who, having heard him, wraps the self of
the child in harmony (none but a musical term could be used here) and, in return, the child echoes the sounds and thus
stimulates itself. Winnicott (1953) had included babbling among transitional phenomena, but he had put it on the same
level as other transitional phenomena. However, the child can only stimulate himself to listen to his own sounds if his
environment prepared him to do so by the quality, elaborateness and volume of its sound bath. Before the look and smile
of the nursing mother has sent back to the child an image of himself that is visually perceptible and which he can use to
strengthen his own self and start his ego, the melodious bath (the voice of the mother, her songs, the music she created
for him) have provided him with a primary sound (echo) mirror which he manipulates, first, for his cries (calmed down by
mother's voice), then for his babbling, and finally for his games of phonemic articulation.
Greek mythology contains almost all there is to know of the unconscious. The fusion of the visual and sound mirror
is revealed in its myths in the constitution of narcissism. It is no chance occurrence that the legend of the nymph Echo is
linked to that of Narcissus. When Narcissus was born, his parents consulted Tiresias, the diviner, who told them that the
child would live to an
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old age only if he did not look at himself. As a young man, Narcissus stirred up a lot of passion in many a nymph or
young girl, but he remained insensitive to them. Echo also fell in love with him, but to no avail. Feeling desperate she
withdrew into solitude and started losing weight; soon there was nothing left of her but a plaintive voice repeating the last
syllable of words. Meanwhile, the young girls who had been neglected by Narcissus sought revenge from Nemesis. After
having spent a very hot day hunting, Narcissus came to a spring and bent over to drink; he saw his image, and it was so
beautiful that he fell in love with it forever. Just as Echo and her sound image, he withdrew from the world to look at his
own image, and in consequence wasted away. Even during the funeral ride down the Styx, he still tried to catch a
glimpse of his own face. This legend appropriately illustrates the precedence of the sound-mirror over the visual-mirror,
as well as the primary feminine character of the voice, and the link that exists between the emission of sound and the
request for love. But it also provides us with elements for an understanding of pathology. If the mirror, whether of sound
or vision, only reflects back the subject to himself—that is, his request, distress (Echo) or quest for ideal (Narcissus)—the
result will be a defusion of instincts. The death instinct is freed and becomes economically predominant over the life
instinct.
The mother of a schizophrenic can often be recognized by the discomfort which her voice produces in the physician
or the psychologist being consulted. Her voice is monotonic (poor rhythm), metallic (no melody) and hoarse (with
predominantly grave sounds which, in the listener, makes for a sense of confusion created by the sounds and a feeling
of being intruded upon by them). Such a voice disturbs the constitution of the self: the sound bath no longer envelops
the subject. It becomes disagreeable and in terms of a skin-self it would be said to be rough or discontinuous. It contains
holes as well as producing them. Wolfson's paper 'Le Schizo et les langues' (1970) provides a good illustration of how
the body is alienated through language. 3 Furthermore, during the acquisition of primary articulation the mother confuses
the child, in his logical thinking, by subjecting him to double-binds and by disqualifying statements he makes concerning
himself (Anzieu, 1975). Only a severe conjunction of these two disturbances, phonemic and semantic, would produce
schizophrenia. If only slight disturbances are created, the result would be a narcissistic personality. If the first were to be
present and not the second, there would be a predisposition to psychosomatic illness. If the second were to be present
without the first, the result would be a great many difficulties in social, intellectual and scholastic adaptation.
The pathogenic defects of the 'sound mirror' are:
1. Dissonance: it is not in temporal accordance with what the infant feels, expects or expresses.
2. Abruptness: it is at times either insufficient or excessive, and moves from one extreme to another in a way
that is arbitrary and incomprehensible to the infant.
3. Impersonality: it does not communicate to the infant what he feels about himself nor what his mother feels
about him. The infant will not feel assured about his own self if for her he is merely a machine to be
maintained rather than a living body which needs help in developing or a person to be loved; so that when
the mother talks to him, she is programming a machine. She often talks to herself in his presence, but not
about him. She may talk out loud or in the muteness of her inner world. This bath of words—or of silence—
demonstrates that he means nothing to her. The sound and visual mirrors contribute to the structuring of the
self and then of the ego, on condition that the mother expresses to the child something of herself and
something of him, as well as something about pleasure and pain which are the primary psychic qualities of
the beginning self.
The sound space is the first psychic space: outside noises which become painful when loud or abrupt, alarming
inside gurgling which cannot be localized in the body, cries that come automatically but are accompanied by an active
motor image, whether they occur at birth, or are
—————————————
3 Cf. R. Gori, 'Wolfson ou la parole comme objet'. Mouvement Psychiatr., 1972.
4There are not many descriptions of the vocal space in literature. I should like to cite two important exceptions: a tragic version,
Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury(1929) ; and a playful one, The Brief Life of Edwin Mulhouse, American writer, 1943–54, as told
by Jeffrey Cartwright; S. Millhouser (1972). The French version of this book got the Medicis Prize in 1975.
- 32 -
caused by hunger, pain, anger, or deprivation of the object—all contribute to making the first psychic space. All of these
noises probably compose what Xenakis tried to reproduce by his 'polytope': a non-organized, temporal-spatial
crisscrossing of signals of primary psychic quality; or what Michel Serres (1975) tries to describe in his philosophy of
flow, of scattering, of a primary cloud of disorder crossed by fog signals. There can arise from this background of sounds,
melodies from a more classical or more popular music, i.e., made of sounds rich in harmonics, proper music, or a human
voice, speaking or signalling, with its inflections and invariants that rapidly compose its individuality. There are moments
during which the baby feels harmonious, portending the unit of himself. He is a self amidst the diversity of his feelings
and he experiences a first enchantment; an illusion of a space in which there is no difference between the self and the
environment and wherein the self is made stronger by both the stimulation and the calm of the environment to which he
is united. The psychic sound space is not limited by psychomotor development, particularly not by the visuo-tactile
coordination—one can hear and be heard in the dark, in blindness and through walls. Only the olfactory space has an
almost identical power of diffusion and penetration—but smells are all experienced passively as the infant cannot
distinguish whether they emanate from himself or from the environment. Smells lack the motor experience that
accompanies the cry—almost all of the body muscles are involved in the latter and it takes years before the baby can
use it to produce signals. If a metaphor is necessary to give it a graphic form then one can say that the sound space is
shaped like a cavern. It is a hollow space like a breast, or the buccopharyngeal cavity; a sheltered space but not
hermetically closed; it is a volume in which there are rumblings, echoes and resonances. It is not by serendipity that
scholars have used the concept of acoustical resonance as a model for all psychic resonance and that psychologists and
group psychoanalysts have used it for that of unconscious communication between individuals! 4 First the visual, then the
visuo-tactile, then the locomotor and finally the graphic space will teach the child the differences between what is familiar
and what is not between the self and the environment, between differences in the self and those in the environment.
The study of this progression has been further pursued by Sami-Ali (1974) in his book L'Espace Imaginaire. But original
deficiencies in the sound envelope of the self will handicap this progression.
In the case of Marsyas, a few months after the sessions I have reported took place, he and I were able to clarify the
way this handicap had developed in him, using these sessions as explicit reference points. This is proof that the effects
of this handicap can be greatly reduced by psychoanalysis, providing one has the time, the will, suitable time-space
arrangements and interprets according to the correct theory—in this instance it was that of the structure and genesis of
narcissistic states. In spite of progress, both in his emotional and social life, which he could not deny, Marsyas went
through another difficult phase, one of scepticism rather than of depressive anxiety. He felt he could never change as
much as he wanted to, that he was too different from others. He became discouraged and thought that I judged him
unable to complete his analysis and therefore it would be better if we both agreed to interrupt it. I accounted for this state
of affairs by the following explanation: Marsyas could not clearly differentiate between what went on in himself and what
went on in his environment. He often felt invaded and disorganized by the feelings of those around him. He tried to
escape from others, but by being overcritical towards himself he refused himself all practical means of escaping from the
impact of the feelings of those around him. Sometimes he kept his feelings to himself and complained that those in his
environment did not see through him; at other times he expressed his feelings in such a way as to provoke violent
reactions. He always came to the same conclusion: I am the one who must change but I am unable to do so. Through
- 33 -
transference interpretations I showed him that in his personal and professional life, as well as with me, he organized his
relationships on the model of an inescapable disagreement between himself and the environment. To explain this basic
discordance, I proposed the following formula: One's happiness has its counterpart in the unhappiness of the other.
Another patient, whose childhood and the defective functioning of his self and his ego reminded me of Marsyas, had
come to the symetrically opposite conclusion: he thought that his psychoanalyst and the environment should change, but
that they were unable to do so. Deep down, the problem was a similar one: there was no differentiation of psychic
qualities—pleasure, pain, etc.—between the subject and his environment; or, if there was, the timing was wrong if until
then the subject had not yet lived a period of time during which the environment had met his pleasure with pleasure, his
pain with appeasement, his emptiness with fulfilment and his fragmentation with integration. It is necessary for the
psychoanalyst to talk about this—without having to place him into a semiophonic cabin—so that a new environment is
created, as harmonious through the voice as it is in its meaning.
Roland Gori (1975) has pursued ideas that are in a way parallel and often complementary to mine; he has developed
convergent notions of a 'sound image', of 'sound walls', of a 'body anchoring of speech' and of an 'alienation of
subjectiveness to code'. Through him I heard of Gerard Klein's (1966) science fiction novel La Vallée des Echos in which
the existence of sound fossils is imagined. 'Explorers were looking for traces of a vanished life, in the desert, on Mars.
One day, they arrived to a place where there were indented cliffs not at all similar to the worn-down landscapes they had
come across on the sand planet … and they met the echo … I perceived a voice, or rather a million murmuring voices.
The uproar of an entire population pronouncing unbelievable incomprehensible words … we were assaulted by sound in
successive and whirling waves.'
'In the valley of the Echoes are gathered the sounds of a vanished people; it is the only place in the universe where
fossils are not minerals but sound masses. An explorer, made greedy by his discovery, overstepped himself and as a
result the voices softened, becoming increasingly fainter until they reached the agony of silence.' Gori (1976) explains
that this happened because his body had become a screen; he was too heavy, too material, for these light voices to
bear contact with him.
This is a beautiful metaphor for sound matter that is foreign to the living body and keeps itself going by its own
empty repetition. It is both a prehistoric memory and the deathly threat of a ragged audiophonic shroud which neither
envelops nor allows for meaning or psychic life in the self.
SUMMARY
The author develops his previous hypothesis of a skin-self, showing the importance of the auditory environment in
the earliest development of the Self. He presents the case of a patient in whom certain Ego functions had been inhibited
by the abruptness in the intonation of his mother's voice. Using semiophony as an illustration, he draws a parallel with
the fact that a harmonious musical bath assists the reeducation of children suffering from language problems. He
enumerates those defects in the sound mirror provided by the mother, which are pathogenic in relation to the child's
narcissistic integrity: dissonance, abruptness and impersonality.
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- 35 -
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The Sound Image of the Self

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