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From: Andreas Starke
Date: 10/22/02
Time: 2:23:19 AM
Remote Name: 80.129.251.159
Dear Walter,
> I know what you mean about achieving a "set" or "being in a zone" when performing sports or some reasonably complicated physical activity (such as Karate). I've experienced it a number or ways including kayaking and speaking. And what is it, in your experience, that makes you achieve that state?
> … the more we try to control our speech system the less well it works …
Many of my clients draw the wrong conclusion from this observation. The semantics of the word "control" is one big part of the problem. The misconception is that, because the stutterer doesn’t control his speech when he’s fluent, he could achieve the state of being fluent by not controlling his speech. The solution is a detour. Practice mindful speech (longer sequences when you are alone, cancellations and pullouts when speaking to others). That requires a lot of control. And it makes achieving the state of being fluent more probable. With some experience you can generate as much fluency as you want. But you cannot force it. It happens or it doesn’t happen.
> It seems to me that lots of practicing is essential. I try to impress that on my students and clients. The techniques are only that, nothing that difficult in many cases. But until you make the technique part of you so that it "becomes you" and there is no separation between you, your thought process, your planning, your action, you've not accomplished much.
I hope that we are talking about the same process, and I suspect we are not. The automatization of the prosodically distorted way of speaking does not happen. William Perkins has stated that very impressively based on his work with several thousand clients. Being able to speak fluently using a controlled way of speaking is a solution for the wrong problem. I don’t want to make a "technique part of me / my clients / somebody else."
How does a piano player practice his Czerny etudes? He hammers difficult tone sequences into his keyboard, first slowly and then faster and faster, that’s not even music! If he would make this technique "part of himself" he would never make it to Carnegie Hall. What he does is fabricating a new package of motor routines so that he can start trying to make music. And with a lot of experience and practice (in making music, not in establishing finger skills) he will be, once in a while, in a state where "it" plays. Fortunately, becoming fluent is a lot easier than becoming a piano virtuoso.
I hope to see you in Montreal at the IFA congress 2003! Andreas