An audio version of a short speech I made at an ASHA Convention in Denver, Colorado, in 1968 is part of this presentation. I will also include below some of what I presented in 1968, and comment on my perspective now, 40 years later, so if you have a slow connection to the Internet, listening to the audio file is not mandatory.

It has been a rewarding experience to look back over several decades of my being in, or mostly around, stuttering therapy and to think again of the implications of the quest for "The Cure". My poem by that title, composed in the sixties and when I was in my mid-twenties, contains a certain levity about what would have been a deadly serious subject a few years earlier...stuttering. It also begs the question -- what can one realistically expect concerning a sustained recovery from stuttering.

I have found, in my experience, no reason to disagree with the often presented assertion that. -- one having come to adulthood as a stutter is likely to continue to stutter throughout life to some degree. However, I have also found that stutterers can be genuinely optimistic that they can effectively deal with their stuttering in a manner that minimizes any handicapping effects and rather contributes to strengthening valuable emotional intelligence capabilities. Examples include the following:

• enhanced self awareness and self management by experiencing moments of stuttering and using skills developed in therapy to move ahead rather than avoid.
• enhanced self confidence from knowing that other feared situations can be surmounted in like manner of surmounting the helplessness of a stuttering episode.
• enhanced empathy for the manifold manifestations of human frailty that afflict all of us in one way or another.

These benefits and others have been very strengthening to my effectiveness both in my vocation and my avocation. I have moved forward in some rather heady areas where there were high speech demands. The speech therapy I was fortunate to receive under Joe and Vivian Sheehan was grounded in reality, and has not failed me in the real world. So here I am decades later, Cured Again! I am aware that I may stutter in given situations, depending largely on what efforts I have recently chosen to expend on "preventive maintenance" work. Nonetheless I have the confidence to rush in, even where fluent speakers fear to tread. I guess that's enough to qualify as a Cure, right?. Works for me!!

Information on how long will it take to download my short speech from 1968 and how to play it after it is downloaded is available at http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/kuster/how.html. (IMPORTANT: please note the size of each of the files). All the files below are of the same presentation, so you only need to open one of them). I concluded my speech, and this paper, with a poem I wrote long ago. It is below.

Listen with Quick Time or Real Audio (12.7 MB)

-Discussion-

September 30, 2003