ABSTRACT
In looking at the therapist’s understanding or interpretation of stuttering, it seems logical to consider how she views the person who is stuttering. Merely to work with stuttered speech by changing a person’s stuttering behaviour through the teaching of a technique, may be viewing the problem too simplistically. In short, stuttering cannot exist outwith the person. A person who stutters going into therapy might be very anxious and highly sensitised to his stuttering behaviour. Therapy, rather than colluding with the stutterer’s pretence and consequently offering false promises, should work towards the unification of the stutterer’s split self and thereby develop a more realistic understanding of what changing the stuttering behaviour is going to mean for the individual concerned. A useful example of modelling could be that the therapist, when encouraging her client through the process of change, is able to carry out some experimenting herself - particularly appropriate where stuttering experiments are concerned.
