Alfred Wolfsohn (23 September 1896 – 5 February 1962) was a German singing teacher who suffered persistent auditory hallucination of screaming soldiers, whom he had witnessed dying of wounds while serving as a stretcher bearer in the trenches of World War I.

Meanwhile, some pupils of Wolfsohn used the extraordinary vocal range they developed to create performing arts productions, which influenced avant-garde theatre and experimental music.

[1][2] After being subsequently diagnosed with shell shock, Wolfsohn failed to recover in response to hospitalization or psychiatric treatment, but cured himself by vocalizing extreme sounds, bringing about what he described as a combination of catharsis and exorcism.

[3] Inspired by the range and expressiveness of his voice, which resulted from the vocal exercises and techniques he developed in an attempt to heal the symptoms of trauma sustained during the war, Wolfsohn began teaching others, acting as both a singing teacher and psychotherapist, seeking to combine the principles of both disciplines.

[7] Wolfsohn had no formal training in either field, but nonetheless became a critic of traditional vocal pedagogy and an advocate for the principles of analytical psychology developed by Carl Jung.

[8] Wolfsohn began his teaching in Berlin, whilst working with the opera singer Paula Salomon-Lindberg where he developed a close mentoring relationship with the painter Charlotte Salomon.

[11] The aim of his lessons was to help students extend the range and expressiveness of their voice to include every possible vocal sound, which he believed both represented and precipitated the realization of increased human potential in other areas of life.

[12] Wolfsohn subscribed to the views of Carl Jung, who proposed that each human psyche comprises a composite of subpersonalities that appear most vividly in dreams.

One group continued to train their voices under the leadership of Roy Hart, a South African actor and regular attendant of the Alfred Wolfsohn Voice Research Centre since 1947, who extended the vocal demonstrations for invited audiences, instigated by Wolfsohn, into full public performances, including Eight Songs for a Mad King, composed especially for Hart by Peter Maxwell Davies.

Roy Hart died in a car accident a year later, but the French-based group of remaining members continued producing experimental theatre and music productions and teaching the approach to vocal expression initially established by Wolfsohn.

The other group, including vocalist Jenny Johnson and film maker, author, and archivist Leslie Shepard, dispersed and sought to continue the work of the Alfred Wolfsohn Voice Research Centre.

In his unpublished manuscripts, Wolfsohn repeatedly describes himself as an exceptionally detached child, an outsider, and an observer, and he attributes this experience to being one of few Jewish children at school.

[2] In 1914, Wolfsohn was conscripted to military service and served as a stretcher bearer in the trenches of World War I along both the Eastern and Western front.

Furthermore, he experienced intense guilt at having run for safety, leaving behind a badly wounded soldier, rather than risking his own life to save the dying man.

[1][20][21] After the war, Wolfsohn was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Berlin, where he was diagnosed with shell shock, prescribed medication, and underwent hypnosis.

Wolfsohn complained that his treatment failed to alleviate the auditory hallucinations of the vocal screams he had heard whilst serving in the trenches.

[1][20] After discharge from hospital, Wolfsohn worked in a variety of positions, including rent-collector, bank teller, piano player for silent films, and hazzan at synagogue funerals.

[9] Although he attributed his recovery from shell shock to these lessons, he also criticized his teachers for their adherence to a classical bel canto approach, which prohibited him from giving voice to the sounds he had heard in the trenches.

Singer, who was a conductor, musician, musicologist, neurologist, and director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, sought to combat antisemitism by drawing attention to the Jewish arts.

Charlotte Salomon documented her relationship with Wolfsohn in a series of paintings, in which he appears as an elusive personal tutor called Amadeus Daberlohn.

[35] There followed a series of reports in national newspapers, all of which concentrated on the extended vocal range demonstrated by Wolfsohn's pupils, with scant reference to any psychotherapeutic benefits of his techniques.

[36][35][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46] The lack of formal recognition as a contributor to psychotherapy remained a frustration to Wolfson, culminating in his failure to secure a meeting with Carl Jung.

Luchsinger's examinations revealed that Johnson's larynx and pharynx showed no structural abnormality, but was small and symmetrical, corresponding to that of a coloratura soprano.

In the summer of 1974, the Roy Hart Theatre group, which comprised some members who had worked with Wolfsohn for 25 years, moved to the south of France where they began converting the buildings of an old château into studios for vocal and theatrical research.

Wolfsohn subscribed to the views of Carl Jung, who proposed that each human psyche comprises a composite of subpersonalities that appear most vividly in dreams.

[72] However, the influence and legacy of Alfred Wolfsohn's work is more apparent in performing arts that use extended vocal technique than in any clinical discipline.

Film: In Town Tonight: Alfred Wolfsohn at Golders Green (television documentary), hosted by Fife Robertson, made and broadcast by the BBC in the mid 1950s.

Günther, M., The Human Voice, Paper read at the National Conference on Drama Therapy, Antioch University, San Francisco, November 1986.

Kretzmer, H., 'Stunning – this Trip with the Human Voice', Daily Express (newspaper), Cited in 'Roy Hart Theatre', unpublished anthology of reviews, extracts from articles and other material, compiled by Barrie Coghlan with assistance from Noah Pikes in 1979.

Shepard, L., 'The Voice of the World', (printed notes to accompany recording, with introduction by Dr Henry Cowell), Vox Humana: Alfred Wolfsohn's Experiments in Extension of Human Vocal Range.