Dr. Tomatis asks the right questions

Something I have not been able to comprehend throughout this whole journey, is what little interest Chris's doctors have shown in the circumstances surrounding his birth and his time in utero. Chris's doctors have treated his condition as if it mysteriously appeared in his late teens. I realize now that the gestation period is highly important and provides the first clues to the condition called schizophrenia.

I finally found in Dr. Tomatis a doctor who understands the link, which is really quite amusing because he's been dead since 2001.

When I filled out the client information form at the Tomatis Center I was given a platform to tell all in response to questions such as:

How long was your pregnancy?
Was there anything unusual about it?
Did you have any worries at the time?
Did you and your partner get along at this time?
How long had you been together at the time?
How many pregnancies have you had?
How long was your labor?
Was there anything unusual about your child's development?

The Tomatis questionnaire is directed at detecting trauma to the fetus. Trauma can be a subtle as everyday maternal worry and anxiety or it can be something as seemingly innocuous as listening to Black Sabbath or other heavy metal music, listening all day to the constant whirring of propellers or jackhammers or sleeping with the television on. Loud noises are traumatizing to the fetus.

The questionnaire is no place to be coy. I wrote entire pages and then some. I finally got to tell someone about my forty-four week pregnancy, the fact that Chris barely moved in utero, the twenty-four hour labor, my husband's and my arguments during our first year and a half of marriage, the financial insecurity, Chris seeing space aliens in the park at the age of ten, and so on. Filling out the questionnaire only confirmed the sinking feeling in my heart that the fetal ear hears all and knows all, and some ears are more sensitive than others.

Sound therapy - the Tomatis Method

"Mozart," I thought, and with the word conjured up the most beloved and the most exalted picture that my inner life contained.

In May this year, immediately after his three month stay in hospital, Chris began the Tomatis Method, an auditory training method developed by a Frenchman, Dr. Alfred Tomatis (1920-2001), who theorized that voice and behavior problems are hearing problems. According to him, the voice only reproduces what the ear can hear.

The human ear, which resembles in shape a fetus, begins to develop a few days after conception and is fully formed by the fourth month of pregnancy. The ear doesn't sleep. It is the only one of our sensory organs that is alert twenty-four hours a day. Tomatis theorized that the problems of autism, schizophrenia and other disorders stem from the fetus not fully hearing the mother's voice. If a child is not integrated properly into the early environment, he or she will begin to listen more to certain frequencies than to others, will lose the desire to communicate and will turn inward by listening to her/himself. If you change the way the ear hears, he reasoned, language and behavior change, too.

Each of us has a unique auditory curve, which responds to certain sound frequencies and not to others. To achieve optimal hearing (and therefore understanding) Tomatis invented the electronic ear, a device that filters out certain sound frequencies using the music of Mozart and Gregorian chants. Why Mozart? According to Tomatis, among other things, the music of Mozart encompasses childhood auditory frequencies of 120 beats per minute. The electronic ear filters the music of Mozart to represent the sound environment before birth.
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Hesse, Hermann, Steppenwolf, Bantam Books, 1974, pg. 233

Reading between the lines for help

I must say I am beginning to get weary of reading between the lines when it comes to finding helpful therapies for schizophrenia. What I mean by this is that there are many potentially useful therapies out there for autism, dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, pervasive developmental disorder, depression, etc. Rarely does the word "schizophrenia" appear in the list of conditions treated. So, once again, I gotta make the link myself. It's not like these problems are really all that different, so why does schizophrenia perpetually fail to make the list?

Schizophrenia deserves better. I am pleased that there is now serious focus on autism , but let's also keep in mind that schizophrenia is more prevalent in the population, and has serious social and economic consequences. In many ways, schizophrenia and autism are not that different, so why this disparity of focus? Is it because schizophrenia happens to adults or is it because schizophrenia is still thought of as untreatable, or both? If you really pay attention, the child who goes on to develop schizophrenia as an adult shares at least some of the traits in one or more of these other conditions.

Chris is currently doing the Tomatis Method. He goes to the center at 9 a.m. to avoid the crush of children at the end of the school day. Tomatis is a method of auditory training incorporating the music of Mozart and Gregorian chants. I had to read between the lines to see if it could be useful for schizophrenia. Apparently, it can be. I understand that the one and only article written by Dr. Alfred Tomatis on his method's applicability to schizophrenia is in French and has not been translated for a wider audience. I will write more about the Tomatis Method later when I get a better feel for any observed benefits.