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From: Judy Duchan again
Date: 10/19/02
Time: 9:25:41 AM
Remote Name: 141.149.242.239
Steve, I’ve been thinking about your comments about the importance of requiring clinicians putting themselves in the shoes of their clients. I could not agree with you more (see my article arguing for clients living by the Golden Rule: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~duchan/goldenrule.html. )
I even agree that the use of voluntary stuttering by clinicians can be a way of placing oneself in the shoes of the client and can add to the empathy that the clinician can feel for a client. I can also see how empowering it must be to have your clinician be willing to stutter in public on purpose, as Bryngleson did for Van Riper. But my worry has to do with the potential abusive nature of desensitization therapies—when the methods add to the fear, expectancy, and avoidance of the speaking situation.
Even clinicians who easily carry out voluntary stuttering and who can take speaking risks, can be abusive in their use of methods such as these. How did Bryngleson know that Van Riper would react positively to his purposeful stuttering? Maybe Van Riper would have been discouraged and embarrassed by the demonstration like a novice watching an expert demonstrate something that he or she can’t possibly do yet. Or maybe Van Riper would have hated seeing Bryngleson stutter and interpreted the act as evidence for how terrible his own stuttering was.
I like Judy Kuster’s idea of supportive and encouraging desensitization. Knowing how to do this without pushing too hard that is the tricky matter here, in my judgment. It is for those situations in which a clinician and client begin to think about the tactics as “tough love” rather than as “support” that makes me wonder if we need protective approaches and makes me ask whether the tactics are shady.