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From: Alison Bliznik
Date: 12 Oct 2004
Time: 18:37:18 -0500
Remote Name: 24.195.29.75
Dear Dr. Schneider, I found your analogy, of the experiences related to stuttering being similar to riding a roller coaster, helpful in trying to understand some of the inner feelings a person may have, associated with stuttering. However, my question is whether or not you are saying that being fluent at a desired time, is completley out of the control of the individual who stutters? Reading through the paper, I got the impression that, like riding in a rollercoaster car, the indiviual has no control what so ever about the course of the trip, and is simply along for the ride. I would agree with you that it should be a goal of an SLP to encourage clients to strive towards balancing self-acceptance with a drive to grow and change, and that people should try and be encouraged to strive towards being driven by difficult challanges, rather than sucumbing to them... but in your description of the nature and instability of stuttering, do you feel that an individual can learn techniques and targets, and have more control over their own speech over time, than say, a person would have control over a runaway car? Perhaps, if a bridge could not be built connecting past fluent or dysfluent events to present and future events, could there be a bridge formed, correlating specific speaking situations or interactions with certain communication partners, for example, with certain behaviors (i.e. fluent vs. nonfluent speeh)? Could this be used to form a connection to future speaking events?