Are people who stutter just speaking differently or do they have a real dysfunction and handicap?

Here is an interesting article discussing the guiding principles according to which speech therapists interact and treat people who stutter.

Two approaches in its extreme forms:

(1) Yes, I stutter. It is not how most people speak but so what? No need to do anything about it. Sorry you therapists have no jobs anymore. And I am even secretely wondering if you (and others) are not telling me that I stutter and that it has a negative impact on me, my family and society because you need to have a job that pays you money or because you want to feel superior.

(2) Yes, I stutter. It is not how nearly everyone speaks and it is the end of the world. I am abnormal and handicapped. I must do everything possible to speak as fluently as most other speakers. And no-one should know that I have this handicap. And the therapists are the qualified specialists and they know how I can become fluent. And if I fail at being fluent, it is my fault because I did not try hard enough and didnt follow all their advice.

For me personally, I started out with (2) and did a lot of therapy (attempts). My subjective view is that I wasted a lot of time with a lot of therapies with a lot of therapists (many were not really specialists in stuttering or a bad fit to me) that only gave me temporary periods of much more fluency and, more importantly, made me focus far too much on my speech. HOWEVER, at the same time I learned a lot about my disorder, about how other people deal with, about how I dealt with it in the wrong way, about myself. This ironically led to me not caring at all anymore and just completely ignoring that I stutter. So I am full circle back to (1), with the exception that I dont blame therapists for anything: they do (or try to do) their best.

Roger Ingham is dead

Sad news! Roger Ingham is dead. For me, he was one of the best scientists working on stuttering. And I really appreciated his support behind the scenes. He did read this blog and appreciated (most of) my posts, especially when he could not publicly criticise some shady work for political reasons, but I could.

I visited him and his wife in Santa Barbara. They were great hosts and I stayed at their place. And I learned that I do not like cold Mexican soups but I ate it nevertheless, as you do! ;-)

I still remember that he said that they found a very effective treatment for stuttering. I believe it was practising the onset a million times. I am wondering what happened to that approach. He promised to send me some papers once they published it.

Here is the blog post, I wrote about my visit.

Here is his obituary in the Santa Barbara Independent.

Thank you, Professor Ingham, for all you have done for stuttering research!