Stuttering has been in the shadows of public awareness for years. Sure, no one dies from stuttering, and it is not pervasive: only one percent of people stutter. Yet it is a malady that has not received a great deal of attention until recently. The King’s Speech, a British historical drama, made stuttering part of the public conversation. Moviegoers learned of the embarrassing pain that most ‘People Who Stutter’ (PWS) suffer.
The movie is about the young man who became the King of England just prior to the Second World War, revealing the painful experiences that stuttering created for him. The speech trainer in the movie, brings into focus this shocking fact: stuttering is not about speech! It is about the ‘thinking’ that is mostly unconscious and in ‘the back of the mind’ of the PWS.
In this volume, the author details a completely new approach to treating this debilitating condition. It both explains the structure of stuttering and blocking and provides cognitive tools for gaining more fluency. From identifying the origins of stuttering, through teaching how to think differently to working with stress, the author provides a unique approach to achieving more fluency.