August (pre-EBOR) Scientific Meeting

“The Music Before Words: Pre-linguistic Resonance in Psychoanalytic Practice”

Presenter: Anastasios Gaitanidis, PhD

Please join us for the third in a series of four Pre-EBOR Scientific Meetings leading up to the Fourteenth International Evolving British Object Relations Conference: Live from Seattle – The Music of Psychoanalysis, taking place October 17–19, 2025 in Seattle, Washington (USA).

In this thought-provoking presentation, Anastasios Gaitanidis examines the musical dimensions of psychoanalytic work, revealing how pre-linguistic acoustic elements—rhythm, tone, and resonance—serve as therapeutic agents alongside verbal interpretation. He introduces the notion of an "acoustic unconscious"—a domain of unconscious process revealed through sound rather than repressed content.

Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s concept of the semiotic and illustrated through clinical vignettes, Gaitanidis demonstrates how attention to vocal nuance, breathing patterns, and rhythmic exchanges can access traumatic experience that lies beyond symbolic representation. Through rich clinical examples, Gaitanidis shows how musical attunement between analyst and patient can restore dissociated emotional capacities, suggesting a more expansive and embodied pathway toward therapeutic transformation.

Learning Objectives

After attending this presentation, participants will be able to:

• Recognize and Utilize Pre-linguistic Communication: Identify and engage therapeutically with the musical dimensions of patient communication, including vocal tone, rhythm, breath, and other acoustic features that convey emotional meaning beyond words.
• Understand the Acoustic Unconscious in Clinical Practice: Comprehend how unconscious material can emerge through rhythm and sound, learning to recognize when musical interventions may access trauma that resists symbolic articulation.
• Develop Musical Countertransference Awareness: Cultivate sensitivity to one’s own acoustic and rhythmic responses within the analytic relationship, using changes in vocal quality, breath, and embodied resonance as diagnostic and therapeutic tools.

Participation in this scientific meeting provides 1.75 continuing education credit hours.