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From: Tom Brennan
Date: 11 Oct 2008
Time: 14:40:34 -0500
Remote Name: 144.96.128.14
I read this paper with a great deal of interest as I am both a clinician and a stutterer. When I was in grad school my mentor tole me that he felt that I could be a better therapist for some clients. He also stuttered and was not talking about my stuttering as much as my blindness. He thought that having an understand of stuttering from personal experience in addition to the fact that I would have to really listen to my clients would provide me with some skills that most clinicians might not have. I have never had a problem with a client either because of my stutter or because of my blindness although my blindness has been a problem both professionally and with some family members. I realize that there are very few blind speech pathologists and no other blind audiologists who were trained as blind persons but I am wondering how the two Joes feel about blindness as a potential aid in stuttering therapy and if either of you feel that it might bolister my position as a stutter in some way. When I work with clients I never under any circumstances work with a stutterer until I have done at least some audiometric testing on them more to assess auditory processing than literal hearing thresholds. This gives me some time to begin my relationship with clients prior to actually starting a stuttering assessment.