Tomatis and Guberina: two pioneers, one shared vision

Alfred Tomatis and Petar Guberina developed in parallel two revolutionary methods based on listening. Discover their points of convergence.

Two men, two countries, one shared revolution in the understanding of the human ear

Alfred Tomatis (France) and Petar Guberina (Croatia) are two major twentieth-century figures who, without directly knowing one another, developed remarkably similar approaches to auditory and language re-education.

Two parallel trajectories

Alfred Tomatis, a French otorhinolaryngologist, discovered in the 1950s that “the voice contains only the harmonics that the ear can hear”. This fundamental law, known today as the “Tomatis Effect”, revolutionised our understanding of the link between hearing and phonation.

On the other side of Europe, Petar Guberina, a Croatian linguist and phonetician, was developing in parallel the Verbo-tonal Method (VTM). He likewise observed that “an adult who hears normally hears a foreign language not by the ear but by the brain”, and that the re-education of the deaf had to proceed by a global stimulation of the nervous system.

A shared observation: the ear is much more than a simple organ of hearing

The two researchers understood that the ear is the principal organ of human communication. Tomatis called it “the human antenna”, while Guberina placed it at the heart of his “Universal System of Guberina Hearing” (SUVAG).

Both observed that:

• The high frequencies stimulate the brain better than the low

• The re-education of the ear automatically modifies the voice

• Rhythm and intonation play a fundamental role in perception

• Deafness is not only a problem of volume, but of perception

Two devices, one shared principle

Tomatis invented the Electronic Ear, a device that filters sound frequencies in order to stimulate the ear selectively. Guberina developed the SUVAG apparatuses, which play a similar role by working on the “optimal frequencies” of each sound of speech.

Both devices rest on the same fundamental principle: modifying the auditory supply in order to transform phonic emission. This is what Tomatis called the “audio-vocal feedback” and what Guberina integrated into the “frequency phase” of the verbo-tonal system.

A shared legacy

Today, both methods are applied throughout the world. The Tomatis method is used in more than 250 centres distributed across 80 countries, while the verbo-tonal method has developed chiefly in the francophone countries and in Eastern Europe.

These two approaches, far from opposing one another, complement one another wonderfully. They share the same profound conviction: to listen is not to hear, and the learning of listening is the key to all human communication.