ABSTRACT
Among persons who are embarrassed by ‘stage-fright’ when speaking in public or in musical or dramatic productions one finds that at such moments they have frequently fallen into a state of self-observation: they hear their own voices, note every movement of their limbs, etc., and this division of attention between the objective interest in the thing produced and the subjective in their own behaviour disturbs the normal, automatic, motor, phonetic or oratorical performance. It is a mistake to believe that such people become awkward as a result of their excessive modesty; on the contrary, their narcissism asks too much of their own performance. In addition to the negative-critical observation of their own performance, there is also a positive-naïve, in which the actors are intoxicated by their own voices or other doings, and forget to bring about an accomplishment with these. The ‘doubling of the personality’ in speaking is a symptom of inner doubt about the sincerity of what is said.
