Vers l'écoute humaine (1974)
Tomatis’s master work and the theoretical summa of audio-psycho-phonology, published by Éditions ESF in 1974 in the “Sciences de l’Éducation” series under the direction of Daniel Zimmermann. Two dense volumes to answer a fundamental question: what is human listening? The first volume sets out the theory; the second offers the practical tools (tests, curves, techniques of audio-vocal education and re-education). This is the book that every APP practitioner — speech therapist, educator, physician, trainer — must have read in order to grasp the scientific reach of the Tomatis method.
“The human ear, in its function of listening, is without contest at the very centre of the research carried out by the author over more than thirty years.”
— Preface
Presentation
In 1974, Tomatis already commanded more than twenty-five years of clinical research. Vers l’écoute humaine gathers for the first time in a single work the whole of the theoretical corpus of audio-psycho-phonology: the physiology of the ear revisited, the laws of the Tomatis Effect, the directional role of the ear, lateralisation, prenatal hearing, the listening test, the phonetic curves of the different languages, and the Electronic Ear as an apparatus of education and re-education.
The work is addressed in priority to professionals of language and pedagogy — teachers, speech therapists, logopaedists, re-educators, psychologists — but its conceptual rigour and its philosophical reach make it a reference text for any researcher curious about the interactions between audition, phonation and communication.
Tomatis distinguishes here, with unprecedented clarity, hearing (a passive, automatic function) from listening (an active, voluntary function, the foundation of true communication). This distinction, which would pass into the common language of APP practitioners, takes on its full conceptual force in this work: it is the pedagogy of listening that grounds the very possibility of educating the human being.
Contents
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Volume 1 — What is human listening? Preface, anatomical and physiological foundations of the human ear, the Tomatis Effect, the directing ear, intra-uterine hearing, birth and language, right-sided lateralisation, audio-psycho-phonology as a discipline.
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Volume 2 — The tools and the curves. The listening test, its interpretation, the phonetic curves of the principal European languages, re-education techniques, clinical protocols, the Electronic Ear. Biophysical appendices and extended scientific bibliography (Békésy, Tonndorf, von Békésy & Rosenblith, Husson, Naunton…).
Place in the work
If L’Oreille et le Langage (1963) is the manifesto, Vers l’écoute humaine is the summa. Tomatis here gathers into a single unified volume all of his concepts, his clinical observations and his technical tools. It is also the book that serves as foundation for all the trainings in audio-psycho-phonology given in the international Tomatis network, and the one to which all the subsequent scientific publications refer.
In brief
For anyone seeking to understand in depth Alfred Tomatis’s thought and the scientific reach of audio-psycho-phonology, Vers l’écoute humaine is the obligatory passage. More demanding than the later general-audience essays, denser than the specialised clinical works, this two-volume book represents the most complete effort of synthesis its author ever delivered. To be placed in any library devoted to the sciences of language, of hearing or of communication.
Available in libraries — BnF, Sudoc.