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IN HIS ARTICLE "Mental Concepts in Singing," Horst Günter states that the singing voice reflects all of the problems and emotions a person has in his private life.1 It is imperative, writes Günter, that personality components and situational/environmental influences which may impinge upon vocal freedom and personal expression be considered. One wonders if Mr. Günter had any idea of the significant changes that would take place in our situational and environmental influences in the short period of time that has passed between 1992 and 2010, and the effect those changes would have on singers in the twenty-first century. Performance anxiety is a common experience for actors, public speakers, and all those who appear before an audience; and it is particularly pernicious for singers. The act of singing requires a high level of expertise in a varied range of skills from fine motor coordination, attention, and memory, to aesthetic and interpretive skills. The physical systems sustaining vocal performance are precisely those likely to be disrupted by the excessive tensions that accompany performance anxiety.
Performance anxiety may be so severe that it destroys an otherwise promising career, or it may appear only as a temporary feeling of anxiety at the moment the performer walks on stage. Whatever the degree and regardless of its form, performance anxiety is a phenomenon that must be acknowledged. It is a natural reaction to situations in which we expose ourselves to judgment and evaluation. "Performance anxiety is not merely an unpleasant or vexing conditioned reflex we can simply train away by learning various techniques of making a good public impression. The search for our power goes much deeper and lies in the structure of our personality."2 Performance anxiety arises from one's own personal experiences. There is general agreement among writers on the subject, that the anxiety response involves a reactivation of unconscious childhood conflicts and environmental stresses unrelated to singing: "inappropriate fears of abandonment, lack of love, fear of failure, and all the ubiquitous psychic pains that mar a person's present existence generally can be traced to early childhood experiences physically stored in the brain."3 In fact, the mechanism is so ingrained for some people, that it has been proposed that performance anxiety may be hereditary. Several studies also have shown...