Those guys said "... speech blocking is not a physiological problem, but a psychological ...", and you disagree.
The header says "Stuttering is psychological".
Fair enough, but perhaps you can answer a question for me. What is the difference between a physiological disorder and a psychological disorder? I'm not trying to be argumentative just for the sake of it; I'm just interested in your answer.
Physiological is about the functioning of the neurobiology of the brain. And psychological is about everything
we have stored within us: our beliefs, our associations to stimuli, our episodic memory, our motor codes, face recognitionmemory.
If you have developed a phobia due to a shocking experience with rats, you have stored this information as associations between a stimulus "the rat" and a reaction "panic". A normal learning process. With behavioural therapy, for example flooding, you can get rid of it. There is nothing wrong with your brain as such.
If you have a tendency of developing diverse phobias without any strong experiences, you are more likely to have a physiological issue in that your brain (probably amygdala pathways) is abnormally sensitive towards conditioning. You can still try flooding and probably overcome a phobia, but it is likely you relapse or you develop another one.
That's the difference as I see it, and stuttering has both components to me!
Descartes made the distinction between the physical body and the soul - and, because of this, for many years, clinicians have had the notion that a psychological disorder is a problem with the "soul" and a physiological disorder was an "organic" problem. In the 1970s there were endless meaningless debates about whether schizophrenia was psychological or physiological. These days scientists are finally coming to the realization that every psychological disorder is really a disorder of the physical brain, so everything is physiological. Have you read Antonio Damasio's book "Descarte's Error"?
That is simply not the case as I have shown in the example above. Not every psychological issue is due to the physical brain. Yes, it is stored in the physical brain as information, but there is nothing wrong with it. No I haven't, but I have spoken to many psychologists and neuroscientists. You have probably misunderstand Damasio or he got it wrong!
Think about your computer. It behaves in a strange way. Two things could have happened: your software is faulty (maybe a computer virus), or your hardware is not performing as it should. Surely, everything even your software is part of the hardware, but it is information stored in the hardware that can be changed.
Actually, I think what Damasio probably wanted to say is that everything, even the soul, is ultimately, a physical (neurobiological) process. I completely agree. Even software is hardware. But I cannot imagine that he said there is no difference between matters of the "soul" and matters of the body.
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"If you have developed a phobia due to a shocking experience with rats, you have stored this information as associations between a stimulus "the rat" and a reaction "panic". A normal learning process."
Yes, but this "learning process" affects the structure of the *physical* brain. Everything you do - including reading my response to your blog - affects the physical structure of your brain. The phobia can therefore be called a neurological problem or an organic problem. Phobias cannot always be extinguished. I know because a family member has tried everything to treat her phobia, and to no avail. Any treatment for phobias attempts to change the brain's structure but the longer a phobia remains untreated, the more difficult it is to get rid of it.
"Not every psychological issue is due to the physical brain. Yes, it is stored in the physical brain as information, but there is nothing wrong with it. No I haven't, but I have spoken to many psychologists and neuroscientists. You have probably misunderstand Damasio or he got it wrong!"
I read Damasio's book 5 years ago, and I definitely didn't misunderstand it, and I don't believe he got it wrong. His view is echoed by Elkhonon Goldberg and Oliver Sacks. But your statement that "not every psychological issue is due to the physical brain" is very strange. If it's not due to the physical brain, then what is it? Is it due to the soul? Where is the evidence for the existence of souls? I hope you get to read Damasio's book. It's a lot of hard work, but it's worth it. If you read it with an open mind, you will (hopefully) get a lot from it. I think that your software-hardware analogy is very weak; the brain simply doesn't work that way.
So, at the very least, I see that the dividing line between "psychological" and "physiological" is very blurred. In reality, I believe that everything we call "psychological" is actually due problems in the physical brain.
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