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From: Russ Hicks
Date: 13 Oct 2006
Time: 15:51:29 -0500
Remote Name: 71.252.204.114
Hi Jackie, ..... Thank you for your kind words. ..... It's amazing how head injuries can cause stuttering also. But it's absolutely stuttering, no doubt about it. However the root cause is sooo different. The same can be true of people with Parkinsons. They can develop stuttering too. It's really amazing. Bottom line all that really goes to show that stuttering, at its most primitive roots, is a physioneurological brain condition rather than a psychological problem or "habit" as was believed for many years. And no wonder the older remedies didn't work! That's like trying to cure cancer with bloodletting. Sorry, that just won't work! ..... Psychotherapy is an intensely complicated treatment and I don't claim to be have any expertise in it at all. However read my paper on the Iceberg MATRIX of Stuttering at http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/isad8/papers/hicks8/hicks8.html and you'll see the difference in pure physical and pure psychological therapies. Neither one, by themselves, works very well at all. It takes a COMBINATION of the two to make any headway in stuttering. ..... I have a sidebar story that is applicable here though. One of my good friends and a world class speech pathologist specializing in stuttering went to a HUGE conference of psychologists and psychiatrists in New York City once. He had a wonderful presentation on stuttering slanted toward the psychological aspects of the condition and he was really excited to be able to present it to the conference. On the afternoon of his presentation, however, only TWO psychologists showed up for his presentation - out of several thousand people there. He even said that those two people were really lost and were looking for presentations on some other disorder. He was devastated. They simply were NOT interested in stuttering. They had other conditions that interested them a lot more. And I can almost understand that given the wide range of really terrible psychological problems in the world today! Witness the recent school shootings and suicide terrorists. It really makes stuttering pale in comparison! ..... The bottom line is that going to a psychologist for treatment of stuttering is like calling the fire department to rescue your dead rose bush in the back yard. Granted, maybe your rose bush needs water, but the fire department (even though they use hoses and water) is designed to treat vastly different problems! ..... And nearly everyone (though I'm sure there are exceptions) who has reported going to a psychologist for stuttering treatment has reported virtually no progress. They might not hate their mother as much as they did, but they still stutter! <grin> Teaching the SLPs various psychological principles is FAR more effective that trying to teach psychologists the principles of speech therapy. ..... But make no mistake about it, being "released from inner suffering" is a truly wonderful experience! I think I'm pretty much there - as you can probably see. But it didn't take going to a psychotherapist to achieve that goal. The NSA and Toastmasters and having an open mind was "all" it took for me. See also the wonderful paper "Mind Matters" by Ellen-Marie Silverman in this ISAD conference. She speaks to a lot of what we are talking about right here. ..... Good luck in Toastmasters, Jackie. You'll love it! I wish you the very best! ..... Russ