ABSTRACT
Desensitisation refers to a change in the emotions a person feels regarding stammering, especially fear. Indeed, Williams simply calls desensitisation ‘fear reduction’ (1979, p246), while Gregory talks about ‘reduction of fear-arousing stimuli including the occurrence of stuttering’ (1979, p17). Similarly, Van Riper, who devotes a whole chapter of his book The Treatment of Stuttering to this topic, refers to ‘calming and toughening the stutterer’ (1973, p367) and to ‘the ways by which we seek to reduce the stutterer’s speech anxieties and other disturbing emotional states’ (1973, p267). Levy prefers to construe desensitisation from a personal construct psychology perspective, calling it ‘reconstruing stuttering’ (1987, p110), and sees its purpose as helping the person ‘to stutter openly without experiencing unpleasant reactions’ (p111).
