AUTOPHONIA

autophonia: translation

   Also known as autophony. Both terms stem from the Greek words autos (self) and phone (sound or voice). They translate roughly as 'hearing oneself' or 'hearing one's own voice'. Autophonia is also known as tympanophonia, although the terms actually describe two different aspects of the same otological condition. The Graeco-German neologism Autophonie was coined in or shortly before 1868 by the Viennese otologist Josef Gruber (1827-1900) to denote the hyperperception of one's own voice that may accompany disorders of the ear. He introduced the term tympanopho-nia to denote the objective amplification of the volume of one's voice - as recorded by means of auditory auscultation - in the same group of otological diseases. Today the two terms tend to be used interchangeably, and their definition has been expanded to include hearing one's own voice, one's breath sounds, arterial murmurs, and other noises of the upper body which can occur in diseases of the middle ear and the nasal fossae, as well as in rapid weight loss caused by wasting disorders such as anorexia nervosa. Autophonia is also an obsolete term for suicide.

   References

   Gruber, J. (1868). Ueber Autophonie und Tympanophonie. Beitrag zur Auscultation des Gehörorgans. Monatsschrift für Ohrenheilkunde, 8, 123-125.

   Finsten, R.M., Faguet, R.A. (1983). Autopho-nia associated with an atypical eating disorder. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 44, 191.