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From: John Paskievich
Date: 04 Oct 2007
Time: 21:53:25 -0500
Remote Name: 24.77.216.171
Hi Jamie; I think the most important thing for a stutterer to understand is that most of what we call stuttering is made up of conditioned responses to our own stuttering and to the real or imagined reactions of our listeners. In children these conditioned responses can be eliminated rather easily through therapy that uses positive conditioning(see Mark Onslow's paper) or fluency can occur spontaneously without formal treatment. With older children and adults spontaneous remission is less likely to occur and therapy becomes more difficult because the stutterer has had a greater amount of negative conditioning. Deconditioning our reactions to our stuttering is a slow and difficult process because the negative memories that are stored in our amygdala can never be completely wiped out. There is a terrible irony to this. The conditioned memories serve to protect us from being hurt but they also hurt us by urging us to flee, avoid, hide and struggle lest we get hurt if we stutter. It's no wonder that stuttering is often described as a paradox. Would my life have turned out differently if I had good therapy as a young child? No doubt it would, but speculating on what might have been is a mug's game that leads nowhere. If my aunt had wheels she could have been a wagon. Sorry about the previous post which was sent incomplete. The computer is not my friend. Good luck with your studies.