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From: John Harrison
Date: 10 Oct 2006
Time: 03:38:28 -0500
Remote Name: 71.135.107.221
Kerry, <<I think this is a great article and has some great ideas for inner motivation. My questions - What about unrealistic intentions? What if a client is following their intentions but continually faces negative results-how should a therapist go about encouraging the client to keep striving?>> That's a great question. The negative results can be caused by many contributing factors, such as (and this is a big one) incorrectly characterizing the problem. This is where intentions play such a big role. Thomas Edison had the right idea as an inventor. When something didn't work, he'd often try a different approach. In fact he'd frequently try many different approaches. In my opinion, I was successful in disappearing my own stuttering largely because I characterized the problem very differently from the way the traditional therapist did. My observation is that when speech pathology first emerged as a discipline in the early 1920s...and they first characterized stuttering...THEY GOT IT WRONG! They did the best they could at the time, but what they knew of psychology in general was much, much less than what we know now. And for 80+ years the field of speech pathology has been building on these original (and incorrect) assumptions.Eventually, people became so heavily invested in their approach that it became unthinkable to give up the direction that they had become committed to. But some SLPs have substantially revised their thinking. Professor William Perkins of USC in his later years developed a whole different understanding about stuttering, as did Professor Woody Starkweather. And there are a number of others as well. As for what the therapist can do, I'd say this -- get to know the individual as a person. Don't just look at his speech, look at his total self. This includes how he relates to himself, and how he related to his environment. What significantly contributed to my (total) recovery was the discovery that stuttering is not just about speech but about the total individual. It's a holistic system that encompasses everything about the person. There are a number of contributing factors, and it's the system nature of stuttering that makes it self-reinforcing and so difficult to effect permanent change. The model I created to conceptualize this is called "The Stuttering Hexagon." I have many articles about this and related subjects in the Information on Stuttering section of this website. Thanks so much for writing. I truly appreciate your comments. Regards, John