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From: Russ Hicks
Date: 29 Oct 2006
Time: 15:00:54 -0600
Remote Name: 71.123.208.188
Hi Maggie and Lisa, ..... Judy Kuster gave me some extra time to answer your question, so here goes... ..... The speech therapy I received back at speech camp in the 1950 (when the earth's crust was just cooling <grin>) was only a very primitive form of what, I believe, would LATER become fluency shaping. I believe that Ron Webster (?) coined the term "Precision Fluency Shaping" at Hollins much later. And that's more of a marketing name (it SOUNDS cool) than it is a true fluency technique. We used the simple term "speech controls" in my days. And that consisted primarily of relaxation, slow speech, phrasing (good use of pauses and breathing) and blending (now called light contact and continuous phonation). The objective was NOT to stutter AT ALL, rather than learn how to deal with the stuttering itself. The ideas of emotions and attitudes didn't come into play until several years later and were later explained in pictorial form by the Iceberg Analogy of Stuttering. 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. The people in my camp 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. ..... Why did my stuttering get worse after coming back from camp? The stuttering iceberg gives us the answer to that. Everyone back then KNEW the fluency shaping therapy worked! Why couldn't I keep it up? Was I simply not trying hard enough? Was I lazy? Didn't I care? Was I stupid? Etc., etc... All those feelings and doubts were accumulating in the part of the iceberg beneath the waterline, but no one knew it! The overall problem was getting bigger and bigger and NO ONE had the slightest clue this was happening. ..... Ice floats because it's less dense than water. So if you blast off the top of an iceberg (and at the same time add even MORE ice to the bottom!), what happens? It rises up out of the water again to compensate for the density difference. Ice floats! Simple laws of high school physics! When I finally realized that, I nearly fell out of my chair! When the stuttering iceberg rises, that's a relapse! It's nearly as inevitable as the physical iceberg rising! Talk about an "A-HA!" moment! That's EXACTLY what happened to me and I NEVER realized it until decades later! ..... Another way of looking at it, my therapy failed for me - and countless others - because I absolutely could NOT keep up the constant practice and work and effort to sustain my fluency. Even today, I can use those fluency shaping techniques and they work almost flawlessly giving me virtually 100% fluency - but they only work for a short time. It's like holding a ten pound weight at arm's length. Sure you can do it for a minute or two, but for a lifetime? No way! Without the knowledge of the stuttering iceberg, and concentrating only on fluency, failure is almost a certainty. ..... Does that answer your questions? ..... I wish you the best in school, Maggie and Lisa. ..... Russ, my email is russhicks@mail.com