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From: Russ Hicks
Date: 11 Oct 2006
Time: 14:14:09 -0500
Remote Name: 71.252.204.114
Hi Chelsea, ..... Thanks for your kind words. ..... In answer to your questions about speech camp and therapists, the simple answer to your question is yes. The camp was organized around "cabins," meaning age groups. There were six age groups (cabins) in the camp ranging from as low as maybe 9 years old up to about 18. Each cabin had about 16 boys (sorry, no girls at that time!) each with about 3 male "counselors" (mainly for physical recreation and sports) and three female speech "correctionists." Therapy - and almost everything else - was done in groups. Very little individual therapy if memory serves me right. So with a ratio of 3 correctionists to 16 boys, that's about one correctionist for every five boys. And it wasn't just for stutterers either. We had articulation campers, deaf campers, cerebral palsy campers and a variety of other campers with other speech disorders. ..... During the winter when camp wasn't in session, I did see an individual correctionist at home. But we used the camp material and followed the camp guidelines exactly. So the bottom line is that I spent nearly eight years (ages 10 to 17) rigidly following a strict fluency shaping regimen. As a parallel, try holding a ten pound weight at arm's length. Can you do it? Sure. For short periods of time! But can you do it forever? Ha! Hardly! So during my therapy sessions I did fairly well (with some notable exceptions) but the overall success was nearly zero. As a matter of fact the older I got (from 10 to 17 again), the worse my overall speech got. ..... Another parallel is to try blood-letting to cure the arthritis. It MAY work for a short time (though heaven knows how), but in the long run it simply doesn't work - at least for me. It was the wrong therapy. Back in those times, the 1950's, the speech correctionists had no clue about the stuttering iceberg. See my paper on the stuttering iceberg at http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/isad6/papers/hicks6.html for details of this. The iceberg - one of the most fundamental breakthroughs in understanding stuttering in the last 50 years - wasn't even conceived until about 1970 and wasn't really publicized until nearly 2000. They were clueless on the emotional/psychological baggage beneath the waterline of the iceberg so they never even thought to treat it! No wonder my therapy failed. But it wasn't their fault. It wasn't anyone's fault really. They just didn't know. ..... So simply going to see a therapist isn't enough. The therapist has to have an understanding of the problem and the RIGHT therapy to treat it. ..... Did this answer your question? ..... I wish you the best, Chelsea. (I may be visiting Sacramento sometime soon. Stay tuned for details...) ..... Russ