[ Contents | Search | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Andreas Starke, Germany
Date: 14 Oct 2005
Time: 11:09:59 -0500
Remote Name: 84.142.188.83
To all of you who are interested in voluntary stuttering, therapists in particular: I would like to share a neat little procedure that I have been using for a number of years now. It is especially useful for overcoming the barrier against voluntary stuttering. Since all of us are success-minded, stutterers and normal speakers alike, it takes something from us to make a mistake on purpose, intellectually, emotionally, and motorically. The procedure us an example of classical counterconditioning. Here is how it goes. I ask the patients to lie on the ground on mattresses, on their backs with something to support their heads. It usually is a group since I do predominantly group therapy, up to six in one session. Then I give them instructions along the lines of “autogenic training” (that may be a German specialty) or progressive relaxation, whatever. I do it in a slow low-voice suggestive way of speaking, very relaxed, with the goal of creating some relaxation in the patients. Then I ask the patients to think of a particularly comfortable and happy situation that they have experienced in their lives. In the same way of speaking I ask them to create a vivid picture in terms of all sensory modalities as they try to remember that situation. This, relaxation and imagery, takes about 10 minutes. The patients haven’t spoken a single word so far. When I feel that they are in a calm mind-body state, although I never can be really sure, I ask one patient after the other to produce a series of words, i.e. serial speech, with some stuttering on every one of those words. So I would ask the first patient, “A…lex, coooould yyyoyyoou pluh-please c-c-count frrrrom uah-one ta-ta-to t-t-en? Cccount sssslowly and stu-tu-tutter llllightly o-on everrrry wword yuh-you s-s-ssay.” I use the kind of stuttering that I expect from the client when giving this instruction, some light fixations, some repetions, some prolongations, some revisions, everything “easily, lazily, and relaxedly” as Van Riper said on the tape with Jeff. Regularily the patient The next patient could say the days of the weeks and the next one the months of the year. It should be nothing that requires any thinking at all. I you need more series use something that is easy to do, 12 first names, 12 countries, 12 cities, 12 animals etc. When all patients are through we do a second round. With all the immigrants now we can get some variety doing some series in their native languages. I do this with every patient who stutters, and I feel I have to do it only once. And the barrier melts down. --- Andreas Starke / www.andreasstarke.de