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From: Howie Schwartz
Date: 10/4/03
Time: 3:35:11 PM
Remote Name: 69.14.193.23
Gunars you've made my day. We have corresponded before and I appreciate your comments about REBT and stuttering. As it turns out, I was in London in September and tried to arrange a meeting with Windy Dryden. I knew that he stuttered and hoped to get a chance to chat with him regarding his own problem, stuttering and the usefulness of REBT. However, Dryden replied to my email by indicating that he was out of town and was sorry that we couldn't get together.
I received an invitation to Ellis' birthday as I spent a long weekend at the Ellis institute a few years back and received their primary certificate. I don't think they have a lot of contact with speech language pathologists. I continue to focus on REBT as an effective method of interacting with adults and encourage my students to do the same.
I have also come across a description of a process that Daniel Goleman described in his book Emotional Intelligence. Goleman described emotional hijacking as a process where there are two paths to reacting to emotional events. The fast path travels from thalamus to amygdala with an immediate response while the slower path travels from thalamus to cortex. As a result of these two pathways, humans have already responded to emotional demands/threats by the time they cognitively realize they have reacted. I believe this is part of the classical conditioning process and why the unlearning of emotional reactions is so difficult. Perhaps this topic will generate additional discussion and hopefully send some people to check the reference.
Howie