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From: Woody
Date: 10/6/03
Time: 9:36:07 AM
Remote Name: 216.240.100.85
Hey Darrell. Nice to hear from you.
We don't incorporate any fluency-shaping activities. In my opinion, they only paper over the existing problem with a new set of avoidance behaviors and in the long run -- and frequently, as the literature suggests, in the short run -- make the stutterer worse than before. As for stuttering modification, some of the things we do when working on behavior, are derived from this school of thought. But most of our therapy is quite different from anything that anyone else is doing.
We begin by increasing the stutterer's awareness of what he or she is doing behaviorally, then increase the awareness of the feelings that accompany those behaviors and of the thoughts and beliefs that are related to them. This enhanced awareness counters the denial which we find so pervasively in stutterers When awareness is enhanced, we work on helping the person become more accepting of the situation as it is (not necessarily liking it, you understand, but accepting the current reality. This applies to behaviors, thoughts and feelings. When acceptance is enhanced, avoidance decreases or disappears, and secondary behaviors dissipate. Finally, when acceptance has been enhanced, a lot of change in behaviors, thoughts and feelings, happens automatically, but for further change we have a number of tried and true techniques, derived mostly from Gestalt therapy, that help the person change -- again, not just behaviorally but also with regard to emtotions, thoughts, and beliefs.
The difference in what we do and other methods is that the others seem largely based on trying to control the stuttering. We don't try to control it; we try to help the person stop trying to control it, to let it go, and, as in Beisser's Paradoxical Theory of Change, the person than is able to change more completely and more permanently.
The book on it is essentially done. We are now getting feedback from selected readers and looking for a publisher.
Woody