Foreword by Nor Hall
From the sound of it, Kittelson knows what she is talking about in this delightful, phenomenological account of how hearing matters to us. Acoustic imagination is given free rein to run circles around visual insight in her ear-based study of human communication that uses dream-telling, telephone conversations, poetry, inner monologues, silent exchange and music to explore the territory of sound. It resonates with meaning and is full of surprises. My first experience of this book reminded me of crawling into a dream closet to find a hidden door that opens into a vast and unknown chamber. It is astonishing to suddenly have so huge a resource at our disposal.
Kittelson's ear awareness finds side-doors into the topic. She lets us in on a secret as intriguing as Freud's footnote about the gradually diminishing sense of smell in human beings: we have a lapsed instinct for interiority. For turning inward, for spiralling deep into the dark, for following evocative reverberations to their source. Ever since the invention of the light bulb our eyes have worked overtime while our ears go slowly numb. Being assailed by sound (TV, air traffic, boom boxes, etc.) is a far cry from the old time community occupation of listening to one another after the sun went down. Airwaves carrying sounds intended for hearing have a way of weaving unraveled beings back together - a point noted in the section on the healing flow of sound.
But the book is no end-of-the-era death knell. She does not write in mourning, but in lively pursuit of the language of hearing, an ode to the persistent primacy of the ear. We haven't really lost it. It's right here, she says, right around the corner from our noses.
It has been a pleasure to actually work around the corner, in the same office as the author, while this book was being written. Her curiosity about sound pervaded the atmosphere making me acutely aware of echoing footsteps, voice patterns, sounds in dreams, involuntary noises, the quality of my own listening, and sound carrying between rooms. I felt as if she lent me her ear, adding another dimension to my own therapeutic listening position. Her work is not for professional listeners only - we are all ears! Anyone eager to sit in the ear's theatre will find this a program for following its labyrinthine drama. Even though the therapy room provided Kittelson's laboratory, the scenes that take place there are not confined. Like the invisible waves of her subject, the soul of sound work moves unimpeded from context to context. Sometimes as the scientist, sometimes the depth psychologist, often the poet, she cultivates the animated art of listening to ourselves talking. I find her effort on behalf of the ear a welcome response to James Joyce's prayer ("Loud, save us!") that "sound sense be made kin again."
Nor Hall, Ph.D.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Essential Sound
I. Sound: Facts and Images
.....One: Sound in Modern Society
.....Two: The Phenomenon of Sound
.....Three: Sound and Psyche
..........A. Affinities
..........B. Symbolic and Poetic Listening
..........C. Music
..........D. Sound and the Healing Arts
II. The Human Ear and Voice
.....One: The Enigmatic Ear
.....Two: The EvocativeVoice
III. The Acoustic Vessel
.....One: Sound as Shape
..........A. First Forms: Initial Contact
..........B. The Ritual Shape of the Hour
..........C. Rhythmic Patterning
.....Two: Sound as Revelation
..........A. Sound Accent
..........B. Sound Synchronicity
..........C. Echo and Return
..........D. Simultaneity and Flow
Three: Around Sound
..........A. Hearing What is Not Said
..........B. Hearing Silence
Four: Therapy Considerations
..........A. Sensory Channels
..........B. The Preverbal Level
..........C. Sound and Silence as Fixation
Conclusion
List of References
Introduction: Essential Sound
The universe is more like music than like matter
Donald Hatch Andrews (modern physicist)
Sound resonates at the very core of our being. From the first miracle of a newborn's squall, to the last rattle of breath leaving a dying person, sound means energy and life. The auditory world sounds and re-sounds, all around. Within its vibrant reality, we are sounding. And things are sounding us. Day and night, it informs us, and helps us form our worlds, within and without.
Ears cupped, bodies humming, we live within sound. We vocalize from our own bodies, expressing our energy through vibration and resonance. In society, in nature, the acoustic array is rich and various. The whispers of breaths and the pad of footfalls play out their rhythms. Technology pulses and thrums, beeps and clicks. Insects buzz, dogs bark, children shout, water gushes, cars and jets roar and recede. From the vibrating air and ground, from reverberating objects, and from all the beings we encounter, sound surrounds us, and enters our being.
However, we rarely notice sound or its companion, silence, except subliminally. For most of us, auditory signals are mere muffled background, vague atmosphere, or irritating noise. Auditorily speaking, our ears are dulled and overloaded. We rarely note, at least consciously, the effect of a person's voice or ponder a quality of resonance or silence. We almost never notice the reality, much less the details, of how auditory energy carries meaning. Primary elements like rhythm, echo and timbre go in one ear and right out the other. It is just like during a film, when we "viewers" hardly notice the sound track at all. Yet the sound is moving things along, enriching and interpreting the film steadily, invisibly and powerfully.
Oddly enough, one reason for our unconsciousness involves the very fact that auditory energy is so basic. The auditory channel is set to go, from very early on in life.... We are also vocal creatures, from the first breath. Our voices sound, in original moments and replayed ones. A myriad of vibrations and rhythms, resonances and silences hold us, vibrate us, move us, all through the life process. Sound is always moving us. Indeed, this fact is a literal, as well as metaphorical, reality. We are in constant reverberation with the world, with ourselves. Ancient tradition has given voice to this fact. "The ear is the way," it says in the Upanishads. "Hear, and your soul shall live, " declares Isaiah in the Old Testament.
.... In seeking for the depths, vision is not necessarily the sensory channel of choice. In the deep, in the underworld, in dreams, the search is for resonance. It is for meaning beyond appearance. The process of seeing has its biases, as all the senses do. The process of seeing, for example, makes perception of the subjective seer very difficult. As Berendt points out, in looking at something, we do not see our own "I" or face. With all of the other sensory channels, perception of self is possible. We can directly hear, smell, taste, and touch ourselves (1).
It is in the very nature of seeing to create what is, in some ways, an artificially separate relationship. In seeing things, we necessarily experience them at a distance from us. There must be space between a seer and a visually perceived object. If the object is too close, it blurs. It darkens. A visual object must be far enough away so that we can see it, as separated and distant. Furthermore, in looking at an object, we usually focus, homing in on a clear view. In visual mode, we sharpen the perceived boundaries between objects and their surroundings and between objects and ourselves. We adjust vision until we perceive a hard line to things. Berendt makes the claim that perception through the eyes encourages more distance, while perception through the ears is more experiential. The closer we edge up on something, he says, the more judging changes imperceptibly into experiencing (2). Indeed, our assumptions, both phenomenological and philosophical, have been shaped by the process of visual perception, by the nature of seeing.
Light is necessary for seeing. It is not necessary to any of the other senses. In eye-minded mode, light is associated with seeking consciousness, with seeking a separate stance. In an up-front, separating-out style, seeing and light create "consciousness." In eye-minded illumination, we are like Prometheus; we have to have the light. So eye-centered are we that, in the metaphors of our language, we actually equate seeing something with understanding it. "Look here!" we say, or "I see what you mean." "It appears to me," we comment, or "He observed this or that," or simply, "Open your eyes!" In fact, we go so far as to say: "Seeing is believing." We really do talk as if we were exclusive creatures of light. As the dim and dark descend, every evening, on our well-lit days, how quick we are to turn on the lights!
We need to notice this domination of the visual mode. We need to awaken to the fact that perception occurs along different pathways, and comes in many styles. ...The imaginative world of dreams, fantasies and myths expresses itself in auditory images, as well as visual ones. In hearing things when awake, and in our dreams and fantasies while unconscious, we are experiencing images, just as we do when seeing things. In Jungian thought, images are the language of the psyche. When discussing how people can work with images, Jung specifically mentions "acoustic images" and "audio-verbal types" (3), among other types. Working with images, be they visual, auditory, kinesthetic or in another mode, is central to understanding the psyche, and especially the unconscious.
In breaking away from the tyranny of "seeing," conceiving of images as only visual, we discover the acoustic world, replete with evocative vibration and sound. It is full of meaning, defining our impressions, enlivening our days and nights. Indeed, in Western culture especially, we might well ask ourselves what this preponderance of eye consciousness means. What might we be missing?
... Sound and reverberation call especially to those layers of experience that hover near consciousness. They take their meaning from the laws of vibration and associativeness. Indirectness, likenesses, hold sway in the night world. Unconsciously, we receive a great deal from the side, from our ears. This world of acoustic perception is one that we are subliminally in tune with. Indeed, we are deeply dependent upon it.
In exploring the depths, vision is the last perceptual mode to center in. Sight leaves us in the dark. Depth work intrinsically entails working in the dark and with the dark. In darkness, we are by no means bereft of our ears, nor for that matter, our other senses. Indeed, they may seem intensified. Working with a more unconscious mode of perception like audition, in its very essence, invites depth work. It is a "natural."
... The first part of Sounding the Soul contains some basic facts and images concerning sound and audition. The second describes some of the specific ways that auditory images provide shape and revelation in depth psychological work. Included are examples of work within an "acoustic vessel," that is, certain auditory-based moments in the psychoanalytic process. They aim to enliven the sense of auditory image and open the ear to imagination to help readers understand those moments, as well as begin to notice new ones in their own lives. Some pieces of auditory dream-work are found throughout the book.
While most examples of auditory work involve scenarios in a therapy setting, I am talking about more than therapy. I am interested in depth communication between people, and between people and their images. Auditory energy is image; it is meaning. I mean to evoke ear-minded ways of noticing and interacting with auditory images, of relating and learning from the auditory experience within ourselves, in our surroundings and in relationship with others. This book is an ode to listening. We need to open our ears. And we need to open our imaginations to what we hear and how we are sounded.
So, what if we conceived of ourselves as auditory beings instead of visual ones? Our style would shift, and so would our availability to the world, inside and out. Centering in sound entails receptive interaction with the unconscious. It brings in a participatory style of consciousness. Rather than "bringing light" to unconscious energies, it means, first of all, being alive, resonant, to it, such as it is.
Footnotes: Introduction
1. Joachim-Ernst Berendt, The Third Ear: On Listening to the World, New York (Henry Holt and Company, 1988), p. 28.
2. Ibid., p. 178.
3. C.G. Jung, The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler and W. McGuire, Eds., (Bollingen Series XX, 2nd Ed.), R.F.C. Hull, Trans., Princeton, NJ (Princeton University Press), Vol. 8, para. 608 and 170.
Chapter One
I. Sound: Facts and Images
1. Sound in Modern Society
Talk-talk-talk. Bleah-bleah-bleah! In our culture, we talk so much, and often so senselessly, that it can be difficult to take the experience seriously. More and more, in our modern environment, the words and sounds we hear are noise, and not meaningful sound. In city streets, stores, in homes and in the media, sensory competitiveness prevails. No wonder that we do not stop to listen, much less listen well. If we did, we would probably want to cover our ears.
The sounds of our society are just too much. Commonly, they are loud, repetitious, mindlessly trivial or shrill. Speech and music are the auditory experiences that we are most conscious of, and the ones we could think carry the most meaning. Yet often they are raucous, empty, boring, even smaller than smalltalk. Hyped-up headline-talk insults our understanding. Words in public places, in the media, on the telephone sound like a blurred, incessant jumble. We close our ears to the sounds of our society, its cajoling, seducing, urging and thrill-seeking.
Auditorily, even on the news, we are tortured by the whanging of pesky sound bytes. Only rarely do we get the chance to chew on anything substantial, much less digest it. The American media is beset by conflictual style news reporting, falsely dramatic features, and waves of societal and political hysteria. Data, the so-called facts, often contradict, and are used in manipulative ways. Such are the auditory manifestations of the Information BOOM. Increasingly, the vocal sounds of our own species sound piercing, taut, out of control. Indeed, dogs are not the only species who bark and howl in this auditory environment. The neediness, the frustration of not being heard, rings out in our voices, in their edginess, their jangling timbres. Human voices are showing the strain. "Yakety-yak-yak-yak!" Indeed, we necessarily avoid careful listening. Why even try?
In the midst of all this overstimulation, it is too much auditory energy, and in particular, noise, which we describe as toxic, as "noise pollution." We do not usually talk about visual, tactile or kinesthetic atmosphere as "polluted." But we do use the phrase "noise pollution." Sound is like the air we breathe, the water we drink and the soil we live on. However, most people do not take noise pollution seriously. Turning a deaf ear, they assume that things they cannot see and touch are not quite real. The importance of the world of sound is somehow not believable.
However, the effects of noise are "real." Noise exerts a powerful effect on our quality of life. As auditorily sensitive people notice, roaring motors, airport thundering, honking horns, blaring sirens and screeching brakes occur in regular and high intensity doses. In many places, public and private, there is a cacophony of radio, TV, video and stereo sounds playing at various volume levels. Saccharine background "musak" is a torture to some ears. And ending up "on hold" on the telephone often means a period of auditory torment, with unpalatable music or ads. Also present in many environments are all of the indeterminate hummings and thrummings of household and office appliances and technology, vibrating at different levels of pitch and volume. Some people are highly reactive to such "background" sounds, often unconsciously so.
Although paying relatively little conscious heed to auditory energy, C.G. Jung detested noise. He railed impressively against it in a letter to Karl Oftinger in 1957, and his remarks strike an uncomfortable chord in their application to modern American society. Jung's list of auditory "evils" includes not only noise, but the gramophone, the radio, and the "blight" of television. Children can no longer concentrate because "so much is fed into them from outside that they no longer have to think of something they could do from inside themselves, which requires concentration." Their infantile dependence on the outside, he says, is thereby increased and prolonged into later life, when it becomes fixed in the well-known attitude that every inconvenience should be abolished by order of the State" (1).
His next words are even more striking: The alarming pollution of our water supplies, the steady increase of radioactivity, and the sombre threat of overpopulation with its genocidal tendencies have already led to a widespread though not generally conscious fear which loves noise because it stops the fear from being heard. Noise is welcome because it drowns out the instinctive warning. Fear seeks noisy company and pandemonium to scare away the demons. (The primitive equivalents are yells, bull-roarers, drums, firecrackers, bells, etc.).. . . Noise protects us from painful reflection, it scatters our anxious dreams, it assures us that we are all in the same boat and creating such a racket that nobody will dare to attack us. (2) Modern "civilization," said Jung, is predominantly extraverted and abhors all inwardness. Its noise is an integral component. We secretly want noise, because when a person is empty inside, he or she becomes somebody by creating a lot of noise.
Upon returning home after living in a European culture for eight years, I was struck most of all by the auditory aspect of America. Before I became used to it again, the atmosphere of unrelenting, extraverted chattering was disturbing. It seemed that strangers were "disclosing" the most intimate and shocking things. There seemed to be so much, and such indiscriminate talk and so little listening or real responsiveness. No wonder, I remember thinking, that in this country, so many people seek the attentive ear of a therapist. Often, it is only in starting therapy that people notice how used they are to not being listened to.
.... Experiencing soundlessness or relative soundlessness is a disturbing experience for most hearing people, producing feelings of emptiness and deadness. They report feeling "unnerved," that their voices "go nowhere," and that they can hear their hearts beat. Helen Keller, who was both deaf and blind, stated that deafness produced a loss worse than blindness. Soundlessness shuts us away from our acoustic background, away from the surrounding vibratory field that hearing people are so used to. We lose contact with the humming, murmuring energy around us.
Sound is a necessary "container," a vibrating and animating energy all around. According to some sources, people who experience deafness are more prone to depression and paranoia. This is probably so for many reasons, unless the person has the cultural experience and support of a deaf community.
... The Neurolinguistic Programmers Bandler and Grinder report that of the three sensory channels (auditory, visual and kinesthetic), Americans pay the least attention to auditory information. They report that most people do not actually hear the sequence of words and the intonation pattern of what they, or other people, say. They are only aware of the pictures, feelings and internal dialogue that they have in response to what they hear. Few people are able to repeat back, in the same intonation, what you say to them (3). Clearly, we are not a very ear-minded culture. If something does enter one ear, it tends to go out the other.
One tragic mishandling of sound occurred in Waco, Texas, in April of 1993. A violent confrontation occurred between the Branch Davidians, a militant religious sect, and the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. In the almost two-month stand-off which followed, the inhabitants, holed up in their compound, were surrounded with blaring noise and threats from loudspeakers and sometimes, the sound of shots and tanks. The ordeal ended in profound and, many feel, unnecessary tragedy, with most of the group members apparently immolating themselves by fire.
The auditory atmosphere in particular was destructive. Loud, ugly sounds and music were inflicted on the group, as auditory torture, late into the night. However, sound and music could have been been orchestrated as a helpful energy. Music therapist Robert L. Tusler suggested that the compound should have been surrounded with amplifiers, and broadcasting should have been constant, keeping the volume low. At first, hymns familiar to members, especially instrumental ones, should have been played, alternating with quiet, mildly emotional short instrumental compositions. Then gradually such hymns as "Amazing Grace" and "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord" should have been introduced, avoiding martial or aggressive songs. As the weeks went by, the emotional content of the instrumental music should have been lengthened and strengthened, keeping all texts simple and direct, emphasizing the love, mercy and forgiveness expressed in the New Testament.
While this treatment might sound naive and idealistic, Tusler stated that his experience bears out its possibilities. "We know where violence leads," he said at the end of his article, "and we know how music has been used in mobilizing people for war by numbing individual conscience. Can we not experiment with what music can do in place of bullets?" (4).
In considering the place of audition and sound in our own lives, it is vital to take this societal mishandling of sound and silence into account. It is the larger auditory habitat for our individual expression and communication. In the midst of this auditory overload, it is not easy to switch over to a more sensitive kind of hearing and listening, in regard to either words or sound. As the backdrop for our communication at more individual levels, these broader environmental conditions affect our interactions in families and friendships and in therapeutic encounters alike.
We need to hear and be heard. We need to feel ourselves to be acoustically alive, as beings vibrating and being vibrated to! "ECHO!!" at least one spray painter was inscribing on the walls all over the city of Zürich in the late 1980s. We need to hear and be heard within an atmosphere of enough resonance and enough differentiation.
Footnotes: Modern Society
1. C.G. Jung, Selected Letters of C. G. Jung, 1909-1961, Sel.and Ed. by G. Adler, R. F. C. Hull, Trans., (Bolligen Series), Princeton NJ (Princeton University Press), 1984, p.162.
2. Ibid., pp. 162-64.
3. Richard Bandler and John Grinder, Frogs into Princes: Neurolinguistic Programming, John O. Stevens, Ed., Moab, UT (Real People Press), 1979, p. 124.
4. Robert L. Tusler, Fellowship, Sept/Oct. 1993, p. 31.
Used by permission of the author and Daimon Verlag, Einsedeln, Switzerland.
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