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From: Tom Weidig (thestutteringbrain.blogspot.com)
Date: 07 Oct 2005
Time: 07:02:45 -0500
Remote Name: 83.99.88.214
Dear Klaas, you wrote that "Stuttering modification obviously is not the way, nor is reducing stuttering frequency using behavioral methodologies." My experience (not as a therapist but as an observer) has been a different one. First, I have witnessed two cases at two different therapies (Star Fish and Kassel Stuttering Therapy) where the clients were perfectly fluent before therapy to an outside observer but seemed to suffer and avoid a lot. Both were very happy with the outcome of the therapy ("it changed their lives"), but for the outside observer they were a bit less fluent in the sense that they were using techniques like gentle onset or slow speech!!! Second, the people at the Kasseler Stuttering Therapy are doing fluency shaping with bio-feedback, and it is often said that fluency shaping is for medium to severe overt stutterers. So they did a therapy evaluation (large sample and long-term) and found that people, who stuttered very little/covert, benefited as much as overt stutterers. So paradoxically one could argue that the speech technique (or voluntary stuttering e.g.) gives them safety and control, which then triggers other processes including reducing or dealing with anxiety, expectation to stutter, and pyschological issues. Just some food for thoughts...