[ Contents | Search | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Ed Feuer
Date: 08 Oct 2011
Time: 21:57:51 -0500
Remote Name: 207.161.157.111
Dick, Van Riper therapy as described in The Treatment of Stuttering, would require a highly structured, labour-intensive, time-intensive, expertise-intensive regimen of identification, in vivo systematic desensitization, modification and stabilization. It involves unlearning, learning, relearning, genuine and thorough desensitization, healing and strengthening. The book, as such, was a compendium of Van Riper's best ideas gleaned from his experience over the course of decades — his description of the ideal therapy situation. But the regimen prescribed there is woefully impractical as a template for therapy delivered by sole practitioners. SLPs very quickly discovered that and at best, picked-and-chose ideas cafeteria-style. That's why these days nobody does the full-regimen Van Riper therapy as described in the book which is out of print. And quite frankly, I don't think Van Riper ever did so either. The full regimen certainly wasn't done when I was at Western Michigan in 1974-75 when he was in semi-retirement. But I still think the book offers a valid model, still the best around for what is needed — but it would take a team — a coordinated multidisciplinary team. The realization of that goal would first require that SLP finally acknowledge that their profession, alone, cannot deliver effective stuttering therapy — still a pretty tall order, unfortunately. But they would still play a central role as facilitators in such teams which would utilize the speech therapy model provided by Van Riper. edfeuer@mts.net