Message to a Stutterer
by Joseph Sheehan

This video consists primarily of edited clips (both in black-and-white and colour) of the pioneering American speech pathologist* at work and is "required viewing" for therapists and adult stammerers alike. Sheehan's discussions with stammerers over a period from 1952 to 1980, which offer a fascinating insight into the operation of his UCLA clinic, are interwoven with footage of various TV appearances featuring Sheehan explaining his methods to a wider audience of the general public. His engaging, matter-of-fact explanatory style perhaps gains fullest expression in these latter studio encounters in which his assertive dismissal of the cant and misapprehension which continue to surround stammering itself conveys the value of openness he espouses throughout the video.

He stresses revealing (as opposed to avoiding) dysfluency as the prime means of reducing the fear bound up with speaking and thereby reducing the severity of the stammer. Deliberate stammering and overcoming fear through talking to strangers and entering feared situations are encouraged, as is "staying with" a block and not backing off. Though some, such as Van Riper, would argue that you are unlikely to eliminate stammering simply by cutting down avoidances, Sheehan's emphasis on fear in generating dysfluency is well attested by his tale of the soldier who could not say the word 'officer' until he became one, whereupon he could not say 'lieutenant' ...

Sheehan also illumines the 'giant-in-chains' syndrome - when the stammer operates as a peg upon which to hang, and blame, all your problems - through the case of the man whose friends "did not like him anyway" irrespective of his dysfluency. The video stresses the variability and unpredictability of stuttering behaviours, even amongst the perhaps unrepresentatively fluent and well-presented clients filmed. To see that "stuttering comes in waves" should be to accept the troughs as part of the natural process, one woman argues. Certainly the overriding message of this film lies in the visible benefits of a sense of rootedness, security, self-respect and individuation (being content with yourself) as a (stammering) speaker.

Reviewed in the Autumn 1995 issue of 'Speaking Out' by Rob Bond.

*We have had feedback pointing out that Joseph Sheehan was actually a psychologist.

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