Alfred A. Tomatis
| Alfred A. Tomatis | |
|---|---|
| Born |
1 January 1920 France |
| Died | 25 December 2001 (aged 81) |
| Occupation | Otolaryngologist and inventor |
Alfred A. Tomatis (1 January 1920 – 25 December 2001) was an internationally known otolaryngologist, and inventor. He received his Doctorate in Medicine from the Paris School of Medicine. His alternative medicine theories of hearing and listening are known as the Tomatis method or Audio-Psycho-Phonology (APP).
Tomatis' approach began as an effort to help professional singers in his native Nice based on his idea that errant hearing is the root cause of a variety of ailments. His Listening Test and later his Electronic Ear therapy were designed to alleviate these problems.
Alfred Tomatis grew up in a musical family in France. His father was an opera singer, and he spent much of his childhood traveling with him and watching his opera performances from the wings. At an early age, however, he and his parents decided he was not fit for the stage. So he went into medicine and eventually became an Ear, Nose and Throat physician.
Soon after he began his practice, his father began referring him opera colleagues with vocal problems. Tomatis soon discovered traditional treatments inadequate but also that there was very little research on the voice itself. He formulated the theory that many vocal problems were really hearing problems. His theory that "the voice does not produce what the ear does not hear", is the hallmark of his research and his method. He discovered that the voices of opera singers had damaged their own muscles of the middle ears. With damaged hearing, they were forcing their voices to produce sounds in registers they could no longer hear.
In his attempt to retrain his patients, he developed the Electronic Ear, a device which utilizes electronic gating, bone conduction transducers and sound filters to enhance the uppermost missing frequencies. The goal is to tonify the muscles of the middle ear in order to sensitize the listener to the missing frequencies.
Tomatis began treating a number of other problems with the same methods, including reading problems, dyslexia, depression, severe schizophrenia, and even autism. He found evidence that many of these problems result from a failure of communication, which has to do with listening and the ear.
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