Consumer Alert: Stuttering and Gender Research

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Re: Individuals and groups, some thoughts

From: Anders Lundberg, Göteborg, Sweden
Date: 10/19/01
Time: 6:48:48 AM
Remote Name: 146.21.116.174

Comments

Hello, again. And thank you once more for the comments and efforts. First, speaking about individuality, I cannot refrain from another Van Riper-anecdote of mine bearing directly on that subject.

I was but a few days in Kalamazoo and visited the aging man, again. Sitting by the fire in the living room in Portage, we talked just about individuality and its importance in seeing people and meeting their needs uniquely. Who got the idea, I don’t know, but we decided to get out in the garden and pick up at least some of the fallen maple leaves, just for the kicks on seeing THEIR individuality, on sizes, colors, nerves, damages and the like. And seeing if we possibly could at least one matching pair. Of course, we didn’t find any alike, not even to a small degree.

But, I must add, all maple leaves, all fallen down from the tree, all marked by their lives up there.

Working with quite a few adults (I was in charge of the national intensive therapy program for 15 years) it was impossible not to slam into the social context of everyone after the decisons made by them to work and to change an ongoing pattern of speech and relating to communication. At first, the clients didn’t take the relational environment into account, but very soon understood that they had to. The resistance from the system was so clear. It came on to me to help them formalize and understand in order so see and understand the dynamics of the systems they were parts of.

Heider was the one I used, “Heider’s Theory of Balance” gives a rough sketch of a small network, but also giving the dominating valence of the “contacts”, say, between a husband, a wife and “stuttering”, how stuttering in “its” existing manner played a part both as a common enemy and, when changed, the agent that threw the system out of balance. The concept of “relapse” was deepened after that, to say the least. “Back to normality” is often a better concept.

More, I think also peoples’ perceptions of goals, whether it will be in “life” or in stuttering therapy, mainly is undergoing a vast process underway. At times we find that the basic goal for some is to live in peace and calmness, and that is best done by leaving therapy. The problem is guilt, of course, the feeling of guilt of “doing nothing” (our both societies are built on doing something until retirement which is the first accepted era when the mere existing is accepted, and people are not very often adjusted to that.) in front of others. Maybe the victims have something to say about that. Yes, peace also have a right in itself, and anyway, who is there to judge?

By the way, I think it was Dr Sheehan who somewhere mentioned that one could easily see a clinician’s prejudices by watching the way he (don’t think there was a she mentioned there!) worked. And you know the approach-avoidance conflict thought, I believe.

Smilingly enough, I just gave the oldie by Harris “I’m OK, Your’re OK” to my loved one the other day. She wanted a resumé…..


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