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From: Judy Kuster
Date: 10/3/00
Time: 9:13:08 PM
Remote Name: 209.114.18.49
Thank you for your interesting question, Lieven. Due to the length restrictions for the online conference papers, we did not include some of the background information available that explores the use of art in stuttering therapy. But I did read a few interesting articles, none of which report any improvement in communication using art therapy. To my knowledge, it has not been studied - yet. Unless it has occurred since 1997 or is reported outside of the speech therapy literature. Perhaps one of my co-authors can correct me. Most of the articles reported using art to explore feelings and attitudes of people who stutter, and perhaps changes over the course of speech therapy.
In the speech-language pathology literature, there was an early study by Sheehan, Cortese, and Hadley (1962) which explored the feelings of stutterers before, during and after the moment of stuttering through drawings. As you know, Joseph Sheehan was a professor of psychology and himself a person who stuttered. Cortese was a speech-language pathologist and Hadley a counseling psychologist. Their study repeated an earlier study by Wischner that had been reported in the Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology. The 48 subjects ranged in age from 11-44. They were instructed to "Draw whatever you think most adequately represents your behavior immediately before (or during, or after) a moment of stuttering." From Sheehan et.al. interpretation of the drawings, "guilt appeared at all three points in the stuttering sequence but was especially marked in the period after the block. Greatest amount of tension was judged to occur during the block and least after. . . . The moment after stuttering was not one of unalloyed tension reduction and frequently was accompanied by increases in shame and dejection as well as guilt. Many records showed tension or guilt all the way through with little change." (p. 138-139). There are several very interesting pictures of stuttering included in the article, including one of a broken heart that interestingly enough looks almost exactly like one of the pictures submitted to this conference - "Getting Stuck on Words" at http://www.mankato.msus.edu/dept/comdis/ISAD3/papers/gallery/album3.html
(Sheehan, Joseph G., Cortese, Peter A., and Hadley, Robert G. (1962) Guilt, Shame, and Tension in Graphic Projections of Stuttering, JSHD, Volume 27, Number 2, p. 129-139.)
Another article I found was by Trudy Stewart, an SLT and Hilary Brosh, an art therapist, both from England. They reported that although the benefits of art therapy are well-documented, the use of art therapy with people who stutter appears to be minimal. Their article also includes several interesting drawings of stammering and concludes with several advantages of using art therapy with stammerers. Their bibliography includes additional references exploring the use of art with person who stutter.
(Stewart, Trudy, and Brosh, Hilary, (1997), The Use of Drawings in the Management of Adults Who Stammer, J. Fluency Disorders, 22, 37-50.)