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From: Walt Manning
Date: 10/2/03
Time: 2:15:43 PM
Remote Name: 134.29.3.133
Not everyone can do that...become fluent when acting or something similar. I have known several PWS who can. As much as anything, it has to do with our self constructs or role. It likely relates to long term success following treatment and we have some indications of that with some of our research. Marty Jezer mentions this in his book "A life bound up in words". Here are 3 quotes: (1) Like actors who are able to move outside their stuttering selves and envision themselves as a fluent character, stutterers learning a second language can sometimes throw themselves whole into a new language and see themselves as, for example, a fluent Frenchman rather a stuttering English speaker. (p. 105) (2) Being a flirt was the only role I could adopt in which I didn't feel as if I were being dragged down by my stuttering. To flirt was to reinvent myself and to become someone I ordinarily wasn't . . . . In the first draft of this book I wrote. "Of course, in assuming this flirtatious role, I was being a total phony." Upon refection, I'm not so sure about that. Who's to say that this identify or that identity is not as real as the identify we usually inhabit. What's phony about getting out of yourself and playing the Lothario,(p. 119) The last quote indicates how (and why) this may be difficult to do(3) Just as I'm uncomfortable in changing the style of my clothes, I'm unable to get out of my skin and imagine myself as a different personality. Except when I'm flirting, I cannot play-act or assume a new identify. I believe that this has something to do with my stutter. I interpret any effort to get out of myself, even if only to be playful, as a rejection not only of what I am but of my stutter. Tempted to be smooth and stylish, I hear an inner voice (it must be my own voice, for I can't identify it as belonging to either of my parents) making a sardonic comment. "Watasmatter, you're not satisfied with who you are" To which I instantaneously and defensively respond, "I am satisfied! I am satisfied! I don't want to be anyone but me!" (p. 120)