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From: Russ Hicks
Date: 10/15/03
Time: 10:16:43 PM
Remote Name: 12.237.88.139
Hi Stephanie,
Amazingly enough the very idea of something other than audible disfluency being present in people who stutter is a relatively new concept to lots of old-time speech patholgists. "If you just learn to CONTROL your stuttering, you'll be fluent and your problems will go away." Good grief! How simple minded can you get? It just does NOT work that way. The iceberg is one of the best analogies I've ever run across to explain the totality of the stuttering experience. I'm glad more people are beginning to realize that.
I agree with you that empathy is extremely important. If a therapist can UNDERSTAND the problem, she (or he) can begin to work competently with it. If the problem is not understood, you're likely as not to be trying to solve the wrong problem - and wind up doing more harm than good.
I'm glad you enjoyed the article. I hope you're enjoying all the papers in this amazing conference!
Cheers,
Russ