The Doctoral Student Summit

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Quo Vadis: Incremental versus Revolutionary Research

From: Gunars
Date: 10/13/02
Time: 2:02:02 AM
Remote Name: 206.63.151.166

Comments

Dear fellow doctorate students,

Albeit I am Psychology Doctorate student instead of a Speech and Hearing Disorder student, I feel kinship to you.

Your article amply illustrated the state in stuttering therapy pre a "Scientific Revolution". Just to set the background of my mindset let me say that Thomas Kuhn (the author of The structure of scientific revolutions) is one of my heroes as is Ludwig Wittgenstein (the author of Philosophical Investigations).

Both of them can be understood easier in the popular books by Walter Tuett Anderson (Reality isn?t what it used to be) and Kenneth J. Gergen (An Invitation to Social Construction).

We are the young turks (although I am in my second youthhood :-) ). We MUST explore the very foundations of what our elder statesmen, i.e. professors, have handed to us.

Maybe among us there is another Newton, Einstein, or Darwin (the bloke who because he stuttered and could not become a preacher, in order to get over his hangover, became a "naturalist" on Beagle, a ship that visited Galapagos. There he was able to visualize and concretize the theory of evolution, presaged by other scientists of his day. Note nothing is the creation of a single person.)

A Ph.D. student (a Doctor of Philosophy) should not be a mere technician. She/he should re-examine the foundations. And given the talent and political finesse and interaction with like minded scholars create a scientific revolution (according to Thomas Kuhn). Even in Alcoholics Anonymous the members know that the epitome of being Unsane ( from Korzybski ? Science and Sanity) is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

What are the same things that we have been doing?

1) Teaching our clients to talk in a very structured setting and then expecting miraculous transfer to the outside world. The saner therapies actually help the person in the transfer process. Others just make a video tape in the acclimated therapy milieu and define the client as cured.

2) Altering our speaking in unnatural ways to prove to us that we are in the driver?s seat of the speech and that all of our secondary and even "extended" primary symptoms are not just happening but are a part of us doing the talking.

3) Teach our clients that we frequently over-emphasize the importance of the speaking situations and, hence, "awfulize" or "catastrophize" even when we only have a small dysfluency. (Some of you may not be up to speed to challenging and disputing this mind set. But more and more it is starting to become the standard desensitization technique in psychological Cognitive Behavior Therapy.)

4) Try to teach our clients a version of unconditional self-acceptance or positive self regard instead of conditional self-esteem based on how well we do. (Again in psychological circles this may be much more prevalent than in stuttering counseling sessions.)

I still prescribe to the last two techniques because I really don?t think we have given them enough time to verify or disprove their effectiveness. Also I prescribe to the first two items, because they have had some successes.

My challenge to you, you young creative, energetic, and ambitious doctorate students is to try to a) either combine the above for basic ideas in a unique, workable sequence (with feedback loops if necessary) or

b) actually come up with new ideas new techniques. Then show that these new ideas work better with rigid double blind studies.

As a doctorate student I am experimenting with the following:

a) TOTAL HONESTY about my problem. Being the first one to admit it and the last one to IGNORE IT. (the whole Argosy/Seattle campus will soon know about it. Even the occasional bumble bee that accidentally enters the campus. :-) )

b) Making jokes about my speech. :-) Such as when I am training for my client-therapist interaction, if I am in the role play of being the client, I ask if they would want to mirror my stuttering as well as the other aspects of my speaking.

But as a stagnant old person, I have not, as yet, come up with REALLY new approaches to therapy. This is your task.

Over the next twenty four hours I will try to come up with something new. The goal being not to eliminate stuttering but help the adolescent or adult stutterer reduce the severity of blocks, the length of blocks so that he or she can obtain and function reasonalby well in any and all occupations of his or her choosing: 1) trial lawyer, 2)air traffic controler, or 3) a clinical psychologist.

Gunars

p.s. So far my administration of cognitive tests and intake interviews has gone well.


Last changed: September 12, 2005