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 SelfDidier Anzieu

It is my intention in this paper to advance further the psychoanalytical considerations which I have already set out onthe anaclisis of narcissism and masochism, and on the functions of the skin. These have led me to formulate thehypothesis of a skin-self (Anzieu, 1968), (1974a), (1974b). I have upheld the hypothesis that the ego is constituted as acontaining envelope, a protective barrier and a filter of exchanges, as a result of proprioceptive and epidermal sensationsand the internalization of skin identifications. First of all, however, I would like to step back and discuss the constitution ofthe self as a pre-individual psychic whole, endowed with an outline of unity and identity which existed prior to theestablishment 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 theeffects of a capacity that the infant must experience if he is to develop psychically. It is the capacity of the mother'sbreast to 'contain' sensations, (particularly coenaesthesic and kinaesthesic), affects and memory traces (or mentalimages) 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 thepersonality.

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 mirrorimage of the whole, unified body. Winnicott (1967) speaks of an earlier phase in which the mother's face provides thefirst 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 evenearlier stage, of a sound mirror or of an audio-phonic skin, and what its function is with regard to the psychic apparatusand 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 thesilenus who invented the flute and provoked Apollo, god of the lyre, into a contest as to who could produce the mostbeautiful music. The god Apollo won by a hair's breadth and, in accordance with their contract, inflicted on the loser thepunishment 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 usedto lie on the couch; now we face each other during the hourly sessions. As a result of this new arrangement, analyticwork started again and produced some improvements in the life of the patient, although he still has a hard timesupporting the interruptions caused by holidays.

The session I am about to speak of is the first—————————————

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

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one after the spring holidays. Marsyas talked about feeling empty rather than depressed. During the past few days whilehe had been resuming his professional duties, he had felt distant from others. He thought that I also appeared to be faraway; that he had lost me. He then realized that the two long periods of depression he experienced during his analysisboth 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 acomfortable 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 healready knew from several weekends spent together. He felt neglected, abandoned and rejected. His wife had beenobliged to stay at home with a convalescing child. During walks he tired easily, but it was mainly in the course of groupactivities at the swimming pool that everything went from bad to worse. He became breathless. He could not find theright rhythm, while his movements became more and more uncoordinated. He was afraid of diving. The sensationscaused by being wet made it unpleasant for him to get into the water. In spite of the sunshine, he shivered. Twice, whilewalking 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 entertainingof a skin-self. Perhaps the reason Marsyas comes to these sessions is not so much to be fed by me, which is somethingI had felt I was doing ever since we made our new arrangement, but rather to be carried and warmed by me; to bemanipulated 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 ofmovement (like the fear of falling). Apart from polite approval, however, I received no reaction from Marsyas. I thendecided to ask him directly: to tell me not how he was fed, but how he was held by his mother when he was little. Heimmediately brought up a memory he had already mentioned a few times, one his mother liked to talk about. Not longafter his birth, his mother, already over-burdened by four children (an older son and three daughters) felt herself caughtbetween the needs of Marsyas and those of her youngest daughter who was then a year old and seriously ill. Sheentrusted him to the care of a maid who turned out to be better at domestic jobs than at child care. The mother alwaysmade a point of breast-feeding him for she had been very pleased with his birth. She fed him generously, but veryrapidly, and as soon as feeding time was over she gave him back to the maid and then turned her attention to her otherchild who had been ill for so long that, at one time, there was fear for her life. Marsyas fed greedily (this behaviourcarried over into adulthood in the rapid attainment of orgasm without much loving accompaniment). Between these visitshe was watched over, yet neglected, by the maid who was a stern, elderly single woman with strong principles and anequally strong superego. She worked hard, out of a sense of duty, and seemed not to derive any pleasure from anythingelse. Her relationship with her employer was of the sado-masochistic type. Her only interest in Marsyas' body was totrain him prematurely, otherwise she provided only mechanical care. She was not interested in his body for itself andneither touched nor played with him. Marsyas felt forsaken and was in a passive and apathetic state. After a fewmonths, his lack of response became apparent to the maid and she told the mother that he did not hear well and wasborn retarded. Appalled by this information, the mother grabbed Marsyas, shook him and moved him about, thusstimulating him—the result was that he looked, smiled and babbled to his mother's satisfaction, and she in turn feltreassured 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. Hewaits for his sessions with me in the same way he did the 'feeding-visits' of his mother. He is anxious at the thought ofmy 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 replacementappointments 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 heexpected me to provide what the maid did not—stimulation to his psyche. There had been moments of such poverty inhis inner life that I was led to believe that he had undergone a period of psychic death. Since the time he started sittingduring 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 theprimitive mirror in which the child learns to be by seeing what he is for his mother, and through her expression gains areflection of what he feels.

Thirdly, I had come to a better understanding of what Marsyas' body image is. For his mother, he was a digestivetube, hyper-cathected and eroticized at both ends. (Even the smallest emotion triggers off a violent need to urinate, andone of his fears is to urinate during intercourse.) The maid, on the other hand, neither cathected his body as a globalmass of flesh, nor as a volume or movement. Hence the often-felt anxiety of empty space which, however, he did notmention until late in the analysis.

We had a long, active and warm verbal exchange on these three themes. Upon leaving, instead of the usual flaccidhandshake, he pressed my hand firmly. My countertransference feelings were mainly of narcissistic satisfaction overthorough work.

At our next session a few days later I was greatly disappointed for Marsyas was depressed and, much to mysurprise, started by complaining about the last session which he considered to have been negative, while to me, itappeared to have been so enriching for him (and for me in my understanding of him). A feeling of disappointment similarto his arose in me, but of course, I did not let him know. My thoughts were: he takes one step forward and twobackwards; he denies the progress he is making; I am tempted to give up. But then I took hold of myself and tried tounderstand. 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 theanalyst to repeat an interpretation when it concerns the functioning of the psychotic part of the personality which is itselfalso subject to repetition and therefore easily escapes insight—for a well-prepared and well-timed interpretation canbring to resolution a neurotic process.) I pointed out that during the last session he had found, through me, the bodilycontact he had missed with his nurse; this immediately aroused in him the feeling that he had, however, lost the othertype of contact, the one more usual between us—as between himself and his mother—of brief and intense feeding. Thisinterpretation was readily confirmed and he resumed psychoanalytic work. He connected this alternation between lossesto his longstanding fear—which he never expressed clearly—of analysis taking something away from him, not in thesense of castration, he added spontaneously, but in that it deprives him of his mental capacities. This particular remarkof his was both judicious and fundamental. The anxiety concerning loss was not related to castration, as it is in the lossof 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 hisnarcissistic libido and the after-effects of the failure of his primitive environment to satisfy the needs of his ego (as theseneeds are distinguished by Winnicott (1967) from those of the body). But where in this sequence can one place theneeds 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 narcissisticwound, was uncovered. What he was unable to obtain from his mother was not compensated for when obtained fromsomeone else—his mother should have given it to him. A continuous and unfinished trial went on in his mind. His motherand 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 wasmore or less maintained during childhood. There was always someone to fulfil the role of mother; a brother, sisters, asuccession of maids and priests, and, mentioned for the first time during these sessions, a neighbour whom he visitedalmost every day from the time he first could talk until he started attending school. He talked a great deal with her, morefreely than he could with his mother who was both too busy to do so and could only accept that which conformed to hermoral code and ideal of the perfect little boy. One of Marsyas' comments was that talking with me is sometimes liketalking 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 inbeing 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 cameup, it became quite acute—he did not even 'hear' me in the acoustical sense of the word. Furthermore, if an interestingidea 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 Imade a connexion, and asked him: When he was little, how did his mother talk to him? He went on to describe asituation of which he had not said a single word despite years of analysis, and which later that same evening I hadsummarized 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 moodswings. The relation of the baby Marsyas to the maternal melody, as carrier of global sense, was thus interrupted, cutup, as the maid's mechanical care was interspersed and cut up by the intense and gratifying body exchange with hismother during feedings. In this way, the two main infrastructures of the signified—namely, the infralinguistic oneconcerning care and games of the body, and the prelinguistic one concerning the global listening to phonemes—wereboth affected by the same disturbance.

On the other hand, Marsyas' mother was incapable of adequately expressing what she felt, wished to happen orexperienced internally. Because of this, she was a cause of either irritation or irony for those in her environment. In allprobability, she was unable to intuit the feelings of the members of her family nor help in their expression. She had beenunable 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-stimulationleads, through internalization, to the auto-stimulation of these same functions. Therefore the aims of analysis in such acase are: (a) to provide this hetero-stimulation through appropriate changes in the psychoanalytic arrangements; throughthe determination of the analyst to symbolize on behalf of the patient every time the latter has a blank mind, that is, isinvaded by psychic death; (b) to bring out, in the transference, the old splits in the self as well as any uncertainties as tothe 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 thetherapeutic alliance between the authentic part of the self and the analyst, he will slowly begin to know, through hisdissatisfaction, 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, which all lead to the

following conclusion; the baby is linked to his parents through a real audio-phonic communication system. Because itproduces the necessary 'formants' for communication, the buccopharyangeal cavity is very easily controlled right at thebeginning 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 fourstructurally 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) thecry in reaction to frustration (as when an actively-sucked nipple is withdrawn). These four cries each have a specificduration of frequency, time sequence and spectrographic characteristics.

The cry of hunger, though not necessarily linked with that physiological state, appears to be fundamental; it alwaysfollows 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 samegoal of stopping the cry—although mothers do react differently according to their character and experience. The bestmeans of extinguishing the cry, however, is the voice of the mother: from the end of the second week it stops the baby'sscreams much more effectively than any other sound or even the visual presence of the human face. As of the thirdweek, 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 thefirst intentional sound made, in fact, the first communication. At five weeks the infant can distinguish the mother's voicefrom other voices, while it still cannot distinguish her face from other faces. So it is that well within the first few monthsinfants begin to decode the expressive value of the adults' acoustic intervention. For the infant it is its first circularreaction, and appears well before those concerning sight and psychomotricity. It is the beginning, and possibly theprototype, 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 topossess, from among the great varieties of phonemes, those that are constituents of his mother tongue. He thus acquireswhat the linguist Martinet (1967) calls the secondary articulation of words (the articulation of the signified into precisesounds or into special sound combinations). At this time, it is uncertain among researchers as to how this acquisition isactually made. It is not so certain today as was once believed, that the child uses a plurality of phonetic structures moreexpansive than the one used in the spoken language by the adults of his environment. Some authors believe that infantsspontaneously use all possible sounds and then slowly narrow them down to those that make up their environmentalsound system. Other authors maintain, on the contrary, that sounds at this stage are imitations and are increasedprogressively.

If we leave aside the frequency of appearance of vowels and consonants, labials or gutturals, one thing remains thatis 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, thechild can only copy the gestures he sees himself making such as those of his hands and feet, the audiophonologicalimitation is much more diversified. In babbling, the infant imitates the sounds another makes as much as he imitates hisown sounds, for instance, at three months one can already hear imitative cries.

There are two experiments worth relating—————————————

From the moment of birth on, the cry is the most characteristic sound made by the baby. Excluded are the specific sounds madeby coughing, eating and the digestive tract. These literally transform the body into a sound box and are disturbing since their originis 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 anumber of ten-week old babies to certain phonetic signals that the babies could reproduce; then they took theirelectrocardiographs while either reduced or normal signals belonging to the adult repertory were presented to them. Theresults show that infants possess a perceptual richness much greater than their capacity for phonetic emission, just as afew 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 moreactively during feeding, with music, than without. As is evident from their eagerness in sucking, some babies might besaid to prefer a classical to a popular melody or song! After a few exercises of this kind, one hour before their meal andwhile wide awake—therefore independent of the gratification provided by feeding—these melodophilic babies were ableto start or stop the recorded music which was connected to the empty bottle at their disposal. These findings confirmBowlby's (1969) theory which states that there is a primary attachment instinct functioning simultaneously with, andindependently of, the oral sexual instinct. But Butterfield also adds an important addition or correction: that mentalcapacities are first applied to material of an acoustical nature. I would like to add that it is probably olfactory in naturealso, but in that case, a scientific demonstration would be methodologically more difficult to carry out and has not as yetbeen attempted. This does away with Wallon's (1945) views, which have prevailed in France for the last fifty years, andaccording to which social communication and mental representation are based on the differentiations of gestures andmimicry. It appears that babies are sensitive to feedback from the environment at a much more precocious level thanpreviously thought. Such feedback is audio-phonological in nature and mainly concerns, first, cries and thenvocalizations, with obvious functional and morphological analogies existing between the two. These form the basis forthe learning of semiological behaviour. In other words, the acquisition of prelinguistic meaning (that of cries and then ofprattling) 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-motorcoordinates each possess their own relative autonomy and specificity: the former sets the stage for the acquisition ofsecondary articulation (that of signifieds into sounds), whereas the latter sets the stage for primary articulation (that ofsignifieds into signifiers). One can therefore be fairly safe in thinking that in the second year of life, both the developmentof the linguistic function and the start of appropriation of the mother tongue require that the child tolerate the structuraldifference between vocal communication and gestural communication and that he overcome this difference by thecreation of a more complex and abstract symbolical structure. Nevertheless, the first problem that a budding intelligenceis required to solve is that of a differential organization of bodily noises, cries and phonemes. During the first year of lifephonetic 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 ofheard-forms (formes entendues) as well as frequency of prattling. It is also at this age that the child becomes afraid ofunknown faces and voices. At around ten months, when he has mastered the thumb-index opposition, he is able toreproduce, in the presence of an outside model, gestures that he cannot see himself doing. He is also able to producerepresentations of perceived objects or events outside of his perceptual field. At the same time, however, and perhaps asa consequence of this ability, he analyses the phono-behaviour of others more than his own. Friedlander (1968) gainedproof for this by using the following device. To the side of the playpen of an eleven-month old child he attached adouble-track tape of two programmes, a time-frequency recorder and a two-button command device allowing the child touse 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 tomonochord by a device; but he preferred his mother's voice when he recognized it as such, that is, when its invariantshad been discovered. (2) The child preferred a familiar and natural-sounding voice, using known words, to an unknownvoice using an unfamiliar vocabulary; but after a few manipulations the latter voice was preferred. (3) The child at firstpreferred a short and repetitively-articulated programme to a long one containing a great deal of information; after a fewmanipulations however he preferred the latter.

At this age, a child is capable of auto-stimulation by choosing material that is unfamiliar to him. Thus hedemonstrates, through his activity, the ability to make differentiations and comparisons concerning vocal and phonematiccharacteristics 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 hisworks, 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 sensoryexcitations (from the skin and muscles) which give rise to a motor [kinaesthetic] image, (p. 318). Later (Freud, 1900) 'theexigencies of life confront it first in the form of the major somatic needs. The excitations produced by internal needs seekdischarge in movement, which may be described as an "internal change" or an "expression of emotion". A hungry babyscreams or kicks helplessly' (p. 565). On the one hand, therefore, the cry is an auto-plastic modification and not analloplastic one, and on the other hand, the motor discharge it carries out is also heard by the environment as a signal towhich that environment usually responds. The alloplastic change is then affected because of the environment, and 'anexperience of satisfaction can be achieved which puts an end to the internal stimulus' (1900, p. 565). While it provides ameans of discharge, the cry also becomes the prototype of the demand: 'In this way, the path of discharge acquires asecondary function of the highest importance, that of communication' (Freud, 1950, p. 318). In this way, a secondstructure of the psychic apparatus is formed in which meaning exists at the elementary level of the signal, and is part ofthe circular interaction with the environment. Freud did not advance very far in the clinical and technical applications ofthis second structure, that is, in the psychopathology that results from deficiencies in the environment at this stage ofdevelopment. Nonetheless, because of his strictness and insight, he foresaw a place for it in his theory, and this allowedhis successors to work on its further development. Moreover, Freud (1950) linked the cry not only to the experience ofsatisfaction but also to the test of pain, and then he further analysed its effect on communication: 'Other perceptions ofthe object too—if, for instance, he screams—will awaken the memory of his [the subject's] own screaming and at thesame 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 beunderstood 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 ofphenomenological corporality. Since Freud, it is from this point that studies were initiated on the psychopathologicalconsequences 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 thesatisfying object. This image is mainly visual or motor and is no longer related to the registering of sound; it is the basisfor 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 associationbetween mental images and instinctual activities constitutes a form of symbolization (that is, it is more than a simplesignal). 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 thoughtand secondary psychic processes. It is of interest to note that Freud (1950) himself described what I shall call the zerolevel 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 thisassociation of a sound (which arouses motor images of one's own as well) with a perceptual [image], which is compositeapart from this, emphasizes the object as a hostile one and serves to direct attention to the perceptual [image]. Whenotherwise, owing to pain, one has received no good indication of the quality of the object, the information of one's ownscream serves to characterize the object' (p. 366). Therefore our first conscious memories are of a painful nature. 'Thereare 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 movementattaching to this sound image' (p. 367). Prolonging the imitation of what is now called a signified (that is pronounced bythe environment), the subject now voluntarily associates sounds to perceptions; thus, 'This association is a means ofmaking memories that arouse unpleasure conscious and objects of attention: the first class of conscious memories hasbeen created. Not much is now needed in order to invent speech.' (1950, p. 366–7.) 25 years later, Freud (1923) againtook up the same analysis and demonstrated that his views on the decisive role of verbal traces in the conscious futurehad not been altered by the elaboration of the second topic: 'Verbal residues are derived primarily from auditoryperceptions, 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 motorimages of words, which, except with deaf-mutes, play the part of auxiliary indications. In essence a word is after all themnemic 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 bethe case that the superego, in so far as it is unconscious, consists in such word-representations and, if it does not, whatelse it consists in. Our tentative answer will be that it is impossible for the superego as for the ego to disclaim its originfrom 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

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auditory perception (instruction or reading) but from sources in the id.'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 thosevocal 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 itsdouble face turned to the inside and the other half to the outside. Since the sound envelope is composed ofsounds coming alternatively both from the environment and the baby, this combination of sounds produces:(a) a common space-volume which

————————————— 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 maintainedthe references to screaming and to similarities of sounds in slips of the tongue and play on words. There is still research to bedone 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 primaryimage (spatio-auditive) of the immanent body, and (c) a link of actual fused reality with the mother (withoutwhich 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 ofmythology and science fiction.

In France, recently, children suffering from language problems have been placed in a sound bath before anyattempts at re-education—this 'treatment' is called 'semiophonie' (Beller, 1973). The subject is confined within aspacious and soundproof cabin which contains a microphone and hearing helmet—a real 'phantasmic egg' in which hecan 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, helistens to a pre-recorded and filtered voice. He is thus submitted to a sound bath reduced to rhythm, melody andinflection. The second phase deals with the secondary articulation. After listening to filtered music, the subject must thenparticipate actively by repeating pre-recorded signifieds that have also been filtered so as to make the voice perfectlydistinct and audible while favouring a scale of high harmonics; at the same moment that he is repeating a word, thesubject hears himself in the earphones—and discovers his own voice by auditory feedback. During the next and moresimple phase, the previous musical bath as well as the filtered sounds are removed, and the repeating of sentences instory form begins. If the child repeats poorly, if he voluntarily adds whimsical or rude variants, no notice is taken and heis of course not reprimanded. He is also allowed to continue drawing while listening and talking. After all, in order tolearn a code, one must be free both to play with it as well as transgress it. 'Thus, while believing he is conversing withsomebody, 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 andinterpretation 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 howeverproves to have borne fruitful results. 'In the first phase of this re-education—the so-called passive phase—when exteriorsounds are filtered to a point of becoming non-significant, it could be said that the subject is experiencing pleasantfeelings of strangeness … This emotion leads to a state of elation, felt in the subject himself, that is, in therepresentation 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 thesubject. The little child is introduced into the world of illusion through the other who, having heard him, wraps the self ofthe child in harmony (none but a musical term could be used here) and, in return, the child echoes the sounds and thusstimulates itself. Winnicott (1953) had included babbling among transitional phenomena, but he had put it on the samelevel as other transitional phenomena. However, the child can only stimulate himself to listen to his own sounds if hisenvironment prepared him to do so by the quality, elaborateness and volume of its sound bath. Before the look and smile

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of the nursing mother has sent back to the child an image of himself that is visually perceptible and which he can use tostrengthen his own self and start his ego, the melodious bath (the voice of the mother, her songs, the music she createdfor him) have provided him with a primary sound (echo) mirror which he manipulates, first, for his cries (calmed down bymother'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 mirroris revealed in its myths in the constitution of narcissism. It is no chance occurrence that the legend of the nymph Echo islinked to that of Narcissus. When Narcissus was born, his parents consulted Tiresias, the diviner, who told them that thechild 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 oryoung girl, but he remained insensitive to them. Echo also fell in love with him, but to no avail. Feeling desperate shewithdrew into solitude and started losing weight; soon there was nothing left of her but a plaintive voice repeating the lastsyllable of words. Meanwhile, the young girls who had been neglected by Narcissus sought revenge from Nemesis. Afterhaving spent a very hot day hunting, Narcissus came to a spring and bent over to drink; he saw his image, and it was sobeautiful that he fell in love with it forever. Just as Echo and her sound image, he withdrew from the world to look at hisown image, and in consequence wasted away. Even during the funeral ride down the Styx, he still tried to catch aglimpse 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 therequest for love. But it also provides us with elements for an understanding of pathology. If the mirror, whether of soundor vision, only reflects back the subject to himself—that is, his request, distress (Echo) or quest for ideal (Narcissus)—theresult will be a defusion of instincts. The death instinct is freed and becomes economically predominant over the lifeinstinct.

The mother of a schizophrenic can often be recognized by the discomfort which her voice produces in the physicianor the psychologist being consulted. Her voice is monotonic (poor rhythm), metallic (no melody) and hoarse (withpredominantly grave sounds which, in the listener, makes for a sense of confusion created by the sounds and a feelingof being intruded upon by them). Such a voice disturbs the constitution of the self: the sound bath no longer envelopsthe subject. It becomes disagreeable and in terms of a skin-self it would be said to be rough or discontinuous. It containsholes as well as producing them. Wolfson's paper 'Le Schizo et les langues' (1970) provides a good illustration of howthe body is alienated through language. Furthermore, during the acquisition of primary articulation the mother confusesthe child, in his logical thinking, by subjecting him to double-binds and by disqualifying statements he makes concerninghimself (Anzieu, 1975). Only a severe conjunction of these two disturbances, phonemic and semantic, would produceschizophrenia. If only slight disturbances are created, the result would be a narcissistic personality. If the first were to bepresent and not the second, there would be a predisposition to psychosomatic illness. If the second were to be presentwithout 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 bemaintained rather than a living body which needs help in developing or a person to be loved; so that whenthe mother talks to him, she is programming a machine. She often talks to herself in his presence, but notabout 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 theself and then of the ego, on condition that the mother expresses to the child something of herself andsomething of him, as well as something about pleasure and pain which are the primary psychic qualities ofthe beginning self.

The sound space is the first psychic space: outside noises which become painful when loud or abrupt, alarminginside gurgling which cannot be localized in the body, cries that come automatically but are accompanied by an activemotor image, whether they occur at birth, or are—————————————

Cf. R. Gori, 'Wolfson ou la parole comme objet'. Mouvement Psychiatr., 1972.

There 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

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by Jeffrey Cartwright; S. Millhouser (1972). The French version of this book got the Medicis Prize in 1975.


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caused by hunger, pain, anger, or deprivation of the object—all contribute to making the first psychic space. All of thesenoises probably compose what Xenakis tried to reproduce by his 'polytope': a non-organized, temporal-spatialcrisscrossing of signals of primary psychic quality; or what Michel Serres (1975) tries to describe in his philosophy offlow, 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 humanvoice, speaking or signalling, with its inflections and invariants that rapidly compose its individuality. There are momentsduring which the baby feels harmonious, portending the unit of himself. He is a self amidst the diversity of his feelingsand he experiences a first enchantment; an illusion of a space in which there is no difference between the self and theenvironment and wherein the self is made stronger by both the stimulation and the calm of the environment to which heis united. The psychic sound space is not limited by psychomotor development, particularly not by the visuo-tactilecoordination—one can hear and be heard in the dark, in blindness and through walls. Only the olfactory space has analmost identical power of diffusion and penetration—but smells are all experienced passively as the infant cannotdistinguish whether they emanate from himself or from the environment. Smells lack the motor experience thataccompanies the cry—almost all of the body muscles are involved in the latter and it takes years before the baby canuse it to produce signals. If a metaphor is necessary to give it a graphic form then one can say that the sound space isshaped like a cavern. It is a hollow space like a breast, or the buccopharyngeal cavity; a sheltered space but nothermetically closed; it is a volume in which there are rumblings, echoes and resonances. It is not by serendipity thatscholars have used the concept of acoustical resonance as a model for all psychic resonance and that psychologists andgroup psychoanalysts have used it for that of unconscious communication between individuals! First the visual, then thevisuo-tactile, then the locomotor and finally the graphic space will teach the child the differences between what is familiarand 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 originaldeficiencies 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 theway this handicap had developed in him, using these sessions as explicit reference points. This is proof that the effectsof this handicap can be greatly reduced by psychoanalysis, providing one has the time, the will, suitable time-spacearrangements and interprets according to the correct theory—in this instance it was that of the structure and genesis ofnarcissistic states. In spite of progress, both in his emotional and social life, which he could not deny, Marsyas wentthrough another difficult phase, one of scepticism rather than of depressive anxiety. He felt he could never change asmuch as he wanted to, that he was too different from others. He became discouraged and thought that I judged himunable to complete his analysis and therefore it would be better if we both agreed to interrupt it. I accounted for this stateof affairs by the following explanation: Marsyas could not clearly differentiate between what went on in himself and whatwent on in his environment. He often felt invaded and disorganized by the feelings of those around him. He tried toescape from others, but by being overcritical towards himself he refused himself all practical means of escaping from theimpact of the feelings of those around him. Sometimes he kept his feelings to himself and complained that those in hisenvironment did not see through him; at other times he expressed his feelings in such a way as to provoke violentreactions. He always came to the same conclusion: I am the one who must change but I am unable to do so. Through


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transference interpretations I showed him that in his personal and professional life, as well as with me, he organized hisrelationships on the model of an inescapable disagreement between himself and the environment. To explain this basicdiscordance, 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, hadcome to the symetrically opposite conclusion: he thought that his psychoanalyst and the environment should change, butthat they were unable to do so. Deep down, the problem was a similar one: there was no differentiation of psychicqualities—pleasure, pain, etc.—between the subject and his environment; or, if there was, the timing was wrong if untilthen the subject had not yet lived a period of time during which the environment had met his pleasure with pleasure, hispain with appeasement, his emptiness with fulfilment and his fragmentation with integration. It is necessary for thepsychoanalyst to talk about this—without having to place him into a semiophonic cabin—so that a new environment iscreated, 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 developedconvergent notions of a 'sound image', of 'sound walls', of a 'body anchoring of speech' and of an 'alienation of

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subjectiveness to code'. Through him I heard of Gerard Klein's (1966) science fiction novel La Vallée des Echos in whichthe 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 hadcome 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 insuccessive 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 wherefossils are not minerals but sound masses. An explorer, made greedy by his discovery, overstepped himself and as aresult the voices softened, becoming increasingly fainter until they reached the agony of silence.' Gori (1976) explainsthat this happened because his body had become a screen; he was too heavy, too material, for these light voices tobear contact with him.

This is a beautiful metaphor for sound matter that is foreign to the living body and keeps itself going by its ownempty repetition. It is both a prehistoric memory and the deathly threat of a ragged audiophonic shroud which neitherenvelops nor allows for meaning or psychic life in the self.

SUMMARYThe 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 inhibitedby the abruptness in the intonation of his mother's voice. Using semiophony as an illustration, he draws a parallel withthe fact that a harmonious musical bath assists the reeducation of children suffering from language problems. Heenumerates those defects in the sound mirror provided by the mother, which are pathogenic in relation to the child'snarcissistic integrity: dissonance, abruptness and impersonality.

REFERENCESANZIEU, D. 1968 De la mythologie particulière à chaque type de masochisme Bull. Ass. psychan. France 4:84-91ANZIEU, D. 1974a La peau: du plaisir à la pensée. In R. Zazzo (ed.) L'Attachement Zethos, Delachaux & Niestle.p. 140-154ANZIEU, D. 1974b Le moi-peau Nouvelle Rev. Psychan 9:195-208ANZIEU, D. 1975 Le transfert paradoxal Nouvelle Rev. Psychan 12:49-72BELLER, I. 1973 La Semiophonie Paris: Maloine.BICK, E. 1968 The experience of skin in early object relations Int. J. Psychoanal. 49:484-486 BION, W. R. 1965 Transformation: Change from Learning to Growth London: Heinemann.BOWLBY, J. 1969 Attachment and Loss I. London: Hogarth Press. BUTTERFIELD, S. 1968 An extended version of Modification of Sucking with Auditory Feedback Bureau of Child Research Lab.

Children's Rehab. M.I.T. Medical Center. Working Paper No. 43.FAULKNER, W. 1929 The Sound and the Fury New York: Cate & Smith.FREUD, S. 1900 The interpretation of dreams S.E. 5 FREUD, S. 1923 The ego and the id S.E. 19 FREUD, S. 1950 Project for a scientific psychology S.E. 1 FRIEDLANDER, B. 1968 The effect of speech identity, voice inflection, vocality and message redundancy on infant selection of vocal

reinforcement J. Exptl. Child Psychol. 6GORI, R. 1972 Wolfson ou la parole comme objet Mouvement Psychiat 3:19-27GORI, R. 1975 Les murailles sonores Evol. Psychiat 40:779-803GORI, R. 1976 Essai sur le savoir préalable dans les groupes de fromation In R. Kaes & D. Anzieu (eds.), Désir de Former et

Formation du Savoir Paris: Dunod.HERREN, H. 1971 La voix dans le développement psychosomatique de l'enfant J. Francais d'otorhino-laryngologie 20:429-435KLEIN, G. 1966 La vallée des échos In E. Losfeld (ed.), Un Chant de Pierre Le Terrain Vague.KOHUT, H. 1971 The Analysis of the Self New York: Int. Univ. Press. LACAN, J. 1949 Le stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du je, telle qu'elle nous est révelée dans l'expérience

psychanalytique In Ecrits Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1966LACOMBE, P. 1959 Du rôle de la peau dans l'attachement mère-enfant Rev. Francaise Psychan 23:83-102MARTINET, A. 1967 Eléments de Linguistique Générale Paris: Armand Colin.McCAFFREY, A. 1967 Speech Perception in Infancy Doctoral Dissertation, Cornell University. (Unpublished paper.)MILLHOUSER, S. 1972 Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer. 1943-1954 New York: Knopf.MOFFIT, A. 1968 Speech Perception by Infants Doctoral Dissertation, Univ. Minnesota. (Unpublished Paper.)MONTAGU, A. 1971 Touching, the Human Significance of Skin Columbia Univ. Press.OLÉRON, P. 1976 L'acquisition du langage In Traité de Psychologie de l'Enfant Tome 6. Paris: Presses Univ. France.OMBREDANE, A. 1935 Etudes sur le langage. Sur les premières manifestations du langage enfantin et sur la prétendue loi de F.

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Schultze Hygiène Mentale 4ROSOLATO, G. 1969 Essais sur le Symbolique Paris: Gallimard.SAMI-ALI, M. 1969 Etude de l'image du corps dans l'urticaire Rev. Francaise Psychan 33:201-226SAMI-ALI, M. 1974 L'Espace Imaginaire Paris: Gallimard.SERRES, M. 1975 Zola, Feux et Signaux de Brume Paris: Grasset.WALLON, H. 1945 Les Origines de la Pensée chez l'Enfant Paris: Presses Univ. France.WINNICOTT, D. W. 1941 The observation of infants in a set situation Int. J. Psychoanal. 22:229-249 WINNICOTT, D. W. 1953 Transitional objects and transitional phenomena Int. J. Psychoanal. 34:89-97 WINNICOTT, D. W. 1967 Mirror-role of mother and family in child development In P. Lomas (ed.), The Predicament of the Family

London: Hogarth Press.WOLFF, P. 1963 The early development of smiling In B. Foss (ed.), Determinants of Infant Behaviour. II. London: Methuen.WOLFF, P. 1969 The natural history of crying and other vocalizations in early infancy In B. Foss (ed.), Determinants of Infant

Behaviour. IV. London: Methuen.


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WOLFSON, L. 1970 Le Schizo et les Langues Paris: Gallimard.


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Article Citation [Who Cited This?]Anzieu, D. (1979). The Sound Image of the Self. Int. R. Psycho-Anal., 6:23-36Copyright © 2008, Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing. Report a Problem


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Anzieu, The Sound Image of the Self

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