Updated
June 21, 2008
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Thoughts...
By: Thomas Krall*
................I am inspired to share with you some thoughts, questions and speculations I had in May 2000, after a wonderful
vacation to Athens, Greece.
I want to invite you on a short journey, around 2400 years back in history. As you know, at that time Athens was the center
of philosophy in ancient Greece. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were the most famous philosophers of this time.
You may recall that Socrates got his deepest inspiration from the Oracle of Delphi, which inspired his whole life and his
philosophy: "Be aware of yourself." Socrates found that you need to look inside yourself, as a necessary first step to
change. 2400 years later Woody Starkweather and Janet Givens-Ackerman (1997) apply this philosophy to the steps a person who
stutters has to go through to recover: "Awareness, acceptance and change". Isn't it interesting to see how current therapy
approaches are influenced by Socrates?
In ancient times, philosophy helped to solve problems for which, today, we look to speech therapy and psychology. We all know
this. But did you know that Demosthenes and Aristotle, the two famous ancient Athenians who stuttered, were contemporaries,
living at exactly the same time (384 to 322 B.C.)?
The question arises: Could Demosthenes and Aristotle possibly have learned from each other methods of how to recover from, or
deal with their stuttering? Possibly by philosophy? If yes, aren't they a perfect example of an antique self-help group with
a super therapy approach - an inspiration to all our self-help groups?
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I am reminded of a story I heard when participating in a self-help seminar in Toronto, Canada. We were asked:
"What was your worst experience, relating to stuttering?" A 26 year-old man started crying ... and said: "That was,
when I was 16. I was the best baseball player in school. And my life dream was: To become leader of that team. But my
dream was shattered by the team's coach. I was never allowed to become captain because of my stuttering."
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A friend from self-help, Germany, 45, underlines the above thesis:
I have learned three foreign languages in my life:
English, French and "Fluency".
* Taken from Thomas Krall Keynote speech given in the third IFA congress in
Nighborg, Denmark, August 2000
Denmark, August 2000 |
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