Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/329

One’s own voice. Here the greatest discrepancy appears. Almost always a person is deeply shocked hearing their own voice. I know for me there seems almost no relation between my voice as it sounds to me and as I hear it over a tape recorder. One hears one’s own voice naturally from the H—that is, we feel the real panic if we are scared, the exultation if we are excited. Heard as a play-back, it is invariably flattened. (Part of the art of the actor is to accommodate his inner feelings to correspond to the outer voice.) (Same for the singer.) But, listening to myself on Lipton’s last night, hearing my voice on the tape recorder, I noticed that a voice is like a face—all the elements on one’s personality exist in the various tones. On the surface my New York Jewish earnest sincere friendly patronizing voice—underneath much more complicated psychic-sexual elements were being communicated.