Veils of Stuttering Blog

One way of looking at overt stuttering behaviors is to see them as resulting from a reaction or defense against the unpleasant feeling of the speech void — the feeling that we know what we want to say, but can’t for the moment figure out how to make the sound. This is the actual speech block, and it occurs in the brain, though we are made aware of it by the mind.

In the worst cases, we feel and react to the block, go ahead and try to speak in spite of it (using an increasingly more complex array of unsuccessful strategies), and fall prey to the chaotic series of movements, escape attempts, blackouts, and emotions that characterizes our particular brand of stuttering.

One rationale for the clinical use of delayed auditory feedback (DAF) in stuttering therapy is that it replaces a focus on the auditory feedback of speech with kinesthetic and proprioceptive feedback, or the “feeling” of speech.  I’m referring here to using DAF to generate very deliberate, “high stimulus” speech, featuring exaggerated articulation, mouth opening, and deliberate, relaxed breathing — not the rapid, quasi-fluent speech that such devices allow for those seeking quick fluency.

The concept behind this is to increase the stutterer’s ability to feel his/her way through episodes of disfluency by shifting from the (theoretical) “internal” speech loop to the (theoretical) “external” speech system when experiencing a stuttering block. This enables the use of techniques such as cancellations, pullouts, and preparatory sets. Some therapists (like Walt Manning) even view the capability to make this transition as a central part of the change process for people who stutter.

Another way to look at this is that the more “automatic” internal loop is dominated by auditory feedback and the time domain, while the more “deliberate” external loop is more closely associated with kinesthetic and proprioceptive feedback and the space domain. Of course, this is more a matter of emphasis, as the systems actually seem to work together.

When viewed in this way, a lot of things about stuttering therapy seem to make more sense, in particular the connection with emotions and feeling that differentiates stuttering therapy from other kinds of speech treatment.

It also leads the way to thinking about supplemental alternative therapy approaches that can be helpful; in particular, those that are descended from Eastern (space-oriented) philosophies rather than Western ones — most of which are tied closely to the time domain. It’s not a coincidence that the Eastern approaches focus on dissolving conditioning and the ego, while the Western ones attempt to build the ego to deal with stress, time pressure, and all of the other ills that face people in developed countries.

More on this later.