Tarbox assumes that almost all individuals, particularly when young, have been exposed to disturbing sounds. He describes characteristic responses of sensitive individuals to unpleasant sounds: sound can be experienced as terrifying, humiliating, smothering. There may be the feeling that mother has betrayed the individual or failed in her function as a stimulus shield. Loud noises may be experienced as a beating object and be reacted to masochistically or by identification with the aggressor. Absence of sound may be felt as abandonment. References to sound in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are discussed in relationship to these points, particularly to sound as representative of betrayal experiences. Tarbox concludes that Joyce's wife was a devoted woman who helped 'still bad ancestral voices'.