To the stutterer
(The subsequent 1998 edition is called 'Advice to those who stutter')
from the Speech Foundation of America.

Did you know that stammerers may be classified as covert and overt? Covert stammerers scan ahead as they are speaking looking for any word difficulty, constantly preparing to avoid words that might cause them to stammer and to reveal their weakness. In contrast, the overt stammerer "barrels on through" the difficult words, stammering but not avoiding. He may not like his struggling efforts but he has learned to endure them. The covert stammerer has a longer way to go than the more overt one. This information is contained in one of the many more commentaries on stammering in this book. (Being American is why stutterer is in the title rather than stammerer.) All of the 24 authors have contributed their best advice to adult stammerers. All of them are stammerers and all of them are speech pathologists, what we in Britain call speech therapists. So their advice comes from experience both of their own speaking difficulties and of the difficulties of those stammerers who have come to them for help. Stammerers are usually great fighters used to battling every time they open their mouths, and this determination to overcome linked with a crusading and caring spirit sometimes results in them becoming therapists. The intensity of their concern for fellow sufferers is a feature of the book; it is fight writing.

This is a book dedicated to the adult stammerer and is particularly suitable introductory reading for those with a growingly acute concern about the problem. The 24 short pieces are full of stories and emotions of the sort that is familiar to every stammerer, and it is encouraging to know that others have been through the same mill. There is plenty of advice, which could be rather heavy were it not that the different authors give advice with a variety of different flavours. One author is quite specific about what exercises to do and how many times ... "Try ten more conversations ..." while another bravely suggests it is not such a terrible thing to avoid difficult words sometimes, and we should not be as critical of ourselves as we so often are. This variety not only gives a balanced view, but gives evidence of the divergence of opinion that there really is amongst stammerers and therapists.

There is also much consistency, evidence of the editor's work. Some of the soundest advice is repeated by many authors, like that we should listen to our stammerers and observe what our bodies are doing. That to have professional help is the best way, but if that is not possible (and it can be expensive in America) then to take the advice being given and be our own therapists. Several authors made the point that even with therapy it is we who make the changes. Stammering is our problem.

When I picked the booklet up for the first time I was tired and my thoughts wandered after reading the first couple of contributions, so I turned to the last chapter, which might have been the final step before putting the booklet down for good. The last chapter is by Charles van Riper, the grandfather of American stammering therapy. Instead of giving his own recipe, which he is most qualified to do, he picks up some of the highlights from the other 23 pieces, and recommends them again for our consideration. What he wrote encouraged me to pick it up again. It is a very positive book.

Reviewed in the Spring 1990 issue of 'Speaking Out' by Graham Parkhouse.

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