The Perfect StutterAfter failing at university, socially isolated and driven by his stuttering to the point of despair, an unexpected encounter with a book about Zen provided a glimmer of hope. Then, little by little his fortune changed, and the stutter - which, previously had posed the greatest obstacle - became the catalyst for the development of a new and profoundly liberating perspective on life. Interwoven with Brocklehurst's personal story, The Perfect Stutter explores the nature of language and verbal communication, the significance of mistakes, and the roles that values and value-judgements play in our lives. In so doing, the book highlights the importance of our deepest desires and their relevance to our understanding of what it means to be a human being. |
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This is a very special book because Paul Brockelhurst combines two things : he's an ex-PWS so he lived through the agony and the suffering related to stuttering, and he was also a researcher in that field so he has a scientific background. The combination of the two makes the book very appealing.
The book is also well written, in many paragraphs there is a sort of a “detached” humour that made me laugh.
For me, the main take-away messages of the book are :
- a person stutters because he/she anticipates or evaluates speech negatively.
- your speech doesn't have to be perfect because there isn't such thing as perfect speech, especially if you have an underlying impediment like most stutterers have (their speech is generally more error-prone than non-stutterers).
- you can't overcome stuttering without healing the whole person. In that regard, Zen and meditation were crucial for Paul.
- the relation between stuttering and dopamine. It is the most solid hypothesis that I 've ever read about stuttering.
"The perfect stutter" was a mind blowing reading, few people understand and explains stuttering like Paul Brockelhurst does.
Table des matières
1 | |
7 | |
30 | |
Faith | 51 |
Medical School | 60 |
The Edinburgh Masker | 66 |
Remission and Relapse | 76 |
Van Ripers Book | 85 |
Disillusionment | 217 |
Drama School | 231 |
The Covert Repair Hypothesis | 234 |
Part 2 | 243 |
Back to University | 245 |
Reviewing the Covert Repair Hypothesis | 259 |
Clinical Work | 276 |
The Primary and Secondary Symptoms of Stuttering | 292 |
Cologne | 102 |
Wilmslow | 109 |
America | 122 |
Philip Kapleau The Three Pillars of Zen | 134 |
Zen Practice | 141 |
Mindfulness in Action | 153 |
A Middle Way | 161 |
Paros and Peterborough | 167 |
Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine | 176 |
Soul Consciousness | 192 |
Separation | 213 |
The Role of Dopamine | 302 |
Psycholinguistic Insights into Dialogue | 318 |
Testing the Covert Repair Hypothesis | 329 |
The Role of Anticipation in Stuttering | 336 |
The Variable Release Threshold VRT Hypothesis | 342 |
The Australian Stuttering Research Centre the ASRC | 356 |
Stuttering in Early Childhood | 364 |
Late Onset Stuttering | 386 |
Epilogue | 389 |