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From: Ed Feuer
Date: 19 Oct 2012
Time: 10:17:27 -0500
Remote Name: 207.161.157.111
Phobia is defined ultimately as an irrational fear. Concern about consequences of stuttering is not irrational because they can be very real, often resulting in unfair social and vocational discrimination. Those consequences are fuelled by the noxious conversational usages of the words stuttering or stammering to connote lower intelligence, shame, failure or incompetence. Proof is as far away as typing stuttering or stammering into Google News. Students in fluency disorders classes are given an assignment to go out into the streets and stores to do pseudostuttering to gain some awareness of what their future stuttering clients face. What usually happens, I'm told, is massive minimization and sabotaging of the assignment. These students, who theoretically possess some enlightenment about the problem, have already been socialized to the attitude that stuttering is something awful and one must not be seen stuttering even if it's "just pretend." Do these students have social phobia? I don't think so. Given the above, the reticence of people who stutter (some of the time) is something which, under the circumstances, is completely normal. Having said that, what I do find irrational is the view held by some SLPs that calls for changes and reforms are simply attacks on the profession to be ignored. — Ed Feuer edfeuer@mts.net.