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From: Darrell Dodge
Date: 10/17/03
Time: 1:35:08 AM
Remote Name: 172.197.132.224
Hello Bob:
Maybe one reason why Dr. Williams understood the role of fear so well is that he addressed it so directly in his therapy. I've benefitted quite a bit from his therapy tapes that are in circulation, and from the dissection of some aspects of fear related to stuttering in the sound clip you've provided with your excellent paper. He was not afraid to get very close to the client's stuttering and encourage/assist him in modifying the exact moment of fear-based tension in a literally hands-on way. If I'm not dealing with fear in some way, I don't consider that I'm engaged in therapy at all. It would be just diddling around.
My question concerns a problem with the perceived credibility of research. Whenever I read a research article on stuttering that concerns brain function in any way, I look through it to see if the role of fear or threat conditioning is addressed at all. It's not very often that I find anything. It seems to me that this is sort of like critiqueing the installation of electrical wiring in a house that's burning down due to a lightning strike. (From a safe distance of course.)
Are you able to find any credibility in such research studies? When you are asked to peer review such studies, do you ask if the reearchers considered the role of fear in the effects or mental processes they are considering. Why do you think that this is so overlooked? For example, how does one take seriously a study of neurolinguistic processing in adults -- whose brains have been pickled by fear for 20 or 30 years whenever they were faced with a speech-language performance or task -- when the role of fear has apparently not been considered at all?
Regards,
- Darrell Dodge