A.P.P. Bulletin no. 5 (1976)

Bulletin of the International Association of Audio-Psycho-Phonology (A.I.A.P.P.), no. 5, December 1976. The document presents itself as an “Inter-Centre Bulletin” (designated in the text by the abbreviation B.I.C.) intended for communication between the centres practising the method. The printed heading reads “International Association of Audio-Psycho-Phonology”; the sections also distinguish the activity of the French association (A.F.A.P.P.).

This issue opens with the organization of A.P.P. training for the year 1977, at a time when the number of centres and the demand for specialization were increasing. It details the curriculum: a compulsory preliminary didactic course, basic training broken down into three sessions (S1 theoretical, S2 of practical deepening, S3 clinical, often conducted in the presence of Professor Tomatis), a one-month placement, and then compulsory annual refresher training. Three formats are offered (spaced-out sessions, a continuous one- or two-month placement, or weekends spread over one or two years), with a complete schedule of dates and locations (centres of Paris, Fribourg and Carboneras). A vast section, “The press and A.P.P.,” lists the articles that appeared in several magazines (Son, Parents, La Recherche, Enfants Magazine, Science et Avenir) and reproduces the letters sent by the association to assert the anteriority of Tomatis’s work on intra-uterine listening and the maternal voice. There follow accounts of regional seminars (Nancy), introductory days, news of the foreign centres (Ottawa, South Africa, Geneva, Lyon), the return of Paul Madaule, a call for the writing of case studies signed L. A. Tomatis, and a long exchange of correspondence in which Professor Tomatis answers twelve questions on language, the civilizations of listening, languages and the spiritual dimension of sound.

Historical context — In 1976, Alfred Tomatis’s audio-psycho-phonology method was spreading through an international network of more than seventy centres, structured around the A.I.A.P.P. and relayed in France by the A.F.A.P.P. This bulletin testifies to the effort to institutionalize the training and to the desire to have the anteriority of Tomatis’s research recognized — his state of health then being in convalescence — in the face of a scientific literature that rarely mentioned it.