Tough Love and Other Shady Stuttering Practices, Then and Now

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Ethics and practices

From: Judy Duchan
Date: 10/7/02
Time: 5:15:02 PM
Remote Name: 129.44.140.207

Comments

Steve--I have been rumaging around to find what Van Riper says about desensitization therapy, since everyone talking about it seems to quote from Van Riper. Here is his description, from Judy Kuster's website. In the wrong hands it seems to be giving clinicians a justification for potentially abusive practices. Have you seen this misused?

From Van Riper, Stuttering therapy in 2050 A.D. http://www.mankato.msus.edu/comdis/kuster/vanriper/articles/2050.html

Once the stutterer had been discovered he was immediately placed under the care and supervision of the therapist. As soon as the team of specialists had surveyed the problem and worked out the appropriate therapy plan, desensitization therapy was instituted for all stuttering children. It was felt that these children were far too vulnerable to communicative stress and had to be toughened to withstand it. Accordingly they were trained in speaking under disrupting conditions of every sort, but these disruptors were carefully and gradually fed into the situation so that the child could withstand them. Among the devices used to accomplish this was a fluency trainer, an electronic apparatus which randomly interrupted the speaking circuits, inserted noise, stimulated with stuttering and phased in subliminal suggestions of incorrect word choices and word fears. The stutterer was trained to resist these influences as he read to his listener on the televiewer. There also were training films in which the stutterer spoke directly to the listener on the screen, answering his questions while the listener showed by his expressions and speech all the unfavorable audience reactions to which the stutterer was vulnerable. Most of the stuttering children showed immediate and profound gains in fluency as the result of this desensitization.


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