Introduction

This chapter looks at some of the ways in which contemporary workers define stuttering and the implications these definitions hold for the ways in which treatment is planned and executed. Van Riper, for example, states simply that ‘a stuttering behaviour consists of a word improperly patterned in time and speaker’s reactions thereto’. But his therapy, developed over many years, is founded on ‘learning theory, servotheory and the principles of psychotherapy’. While Perkins, also focuses on the speech act in his definition of stuttering as ‘dis-co-ordination of phonation with articulation and respiration’, his treatment programme is very different from that of Ryan. An alternative to following one particular approach in treatment is for the clinician to equip herself with a wide range of skills and attempt through careful assessment to choose those procedures which seem relevant to the client in question. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.