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From: Russ Hicks
Date: 22 Oct 2006
Time: 11:42:49 -0500
Remote Name: 71.123.208.188
Hi Jenny and Ashley, ..... Thanks for your kind words. They really do mean a lot to me. ..... You asked, "I see you received therapy from a speech correction camp focusing on fluency shaping. Have you received any more therapy since then?" No, not really, at least no formal therapy. But by the time I got into the National Stuttering Association in about 1984, I became surrounded by a bunch of experts in the stuttering community and got "therapy by osmosis" I guess you could say. ..... You also asked, "... was a different approach used that may have worked better or that you preferred?" Yes. Unfortunately such therapy wasn't available when I was having formal therapy in camp. I went to camp in the 1950's - when the earth's crust was just cooling - and the speech "correctionists" as we called them back then simply didn't KNOW what we know today, especially 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. We just didn't know. ..... Hindsight is always 20/20. But we DO know about the iceberg today! So it's up to YOU and your fellow students to use what you've learned to help your clients in the future. Good luck! As a future SLP, you'll have more opportunities to affect other people's lives than you can possibly imagine. The bad news is that you probably won't even hear about 99% of them. But the good news is that the 1% that you DO hear back from will make everything you do all worthwhile! ..... You also asked, "How has your stuttering changed as you've started speaking more?" My core stuttering hasn't really changed that much, but my secondaries, my struggles, my titanic efforts to hide what I never could hide, have all but disappeared. Today, my stuttering is FAR more relaxed and easy and open and doesn't really hinder my communication abilities much - if any - at all. Right now I lead a very "fluent lifestyle" even though I continue to stutter. ..... Does that answer your questions? ..... I wish you both the best, Jenny and Ashley. ..... Russ, my email is russhicks@mail.com