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From: Ken St. Louis
Date: 04 Oct 2011
Time: 09:18:32 -0500
Remote Name: 157.182.15.31
I agree with Scott here absolutely. I tell my clients that our goal is to move the feelings about voluntary stuttering from "dread" to "unpleasantness." But here's another angle...Van Riper cautioned us about the masochistic stutterer who rather seems to enjoy punishing his or her listener. I've really only seen one or two such stutterers in my many years of practice, and in those cases quickly abandoned the voluntary stuttering assignments. But I have often had stutterers tell me something like, "I couldn't believe it, but I really began to have a strange but good feeling as I was stuttering (voluntarily) to people." This is NOT a dangerous thing and, in my experience, is temporary. It's just the pendulum swinging a bit too far the other way, that is from dread to, "Dang it, I'm going to stutter and I'm proud of it!" Eventually, if things work out well, the feeling settles to, "This isn't fun, but it's a necessary chore." One client regarded doing voluntary stuttering as hitting her "reset" button.