h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks Icy -

So should this go to Peer Review? with a note saying that Icy thought it would be a good personal account in the guide.

Given that 3/4 guide editors have read it I think that should be ok...

*if that's ok with the guide editors*.

Entry: Interiorised or Covert Stammering – A Personal Account - A87707857
Author: Otto Fisch - In my Joy Division oven gloves - U182089


Of course it should go into Peer Review

Let's see what the broader view of this is.


Ps do check out the Writing-guidelines. First person has always been allowed - it is only ranty opinion pieces that fell foul of this.

the other reason for not writing in First person, was that it made later updates difficult, and in Entries where first person was not the best way to express the facts, third person is preferable. In this instance, this is a first hand account of a very useful subject.

The Editors have spoken!

Oh, I thought that was you!

I concur with the consensus of the Guide Editors, here...

If that wasn't you, Icy or Gnomon, and it wasn't me, it must have been Lanza.

Is the editor happy to remove and resubmit? Alternatively, the editors could try pressing that rarely-pressed 'move between review forums' button.

Sorry it was me - I like wearing hats, and the Guide Eds hat is rather posh.

I've taken it off now,

Seriously though, I think the author should move this themselves. But if they have a problem we* will assist.



*The use of the pronoun 'we' is growing upon me. Watch out if I start using it in the royal sense as the Guide Ed hat may be too small for my inflated head.

I'd like to tweak a little more before submitting to peer review. One or two sections seem a little confused, the conversational tone doesn't work in one or two places, and it feels too long.

Thanks to everyone (named and anonymous) for comments and general supportive noises.

It's interesting that first person is allowed (albeit exceptionally)... but I'm not sure that was always the case. I've got vague memories of something really brilliant being submitted that was so good that an exception was made, which was incorporated into the rules. But perhaps I've misremembered...

Personally I like wearing lots of hats at the same time.

Looks like you've got it in as soon as you make your changes Otto.

I seem to remember an entry on "How I coped with a Brain Tumour" or something like that, which was very personal, and was written in first person. But another one which was written in first person "Birds of the Niagara Gorge" was re-written to eliminate at least half of the first person references. We ended up in that one with large chunks of quoted text in the middle of a third-person presentation of the subject.

Just a note, I came across this item from the Huffington Post/AOL from a blogger there:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-wolson/psychological-causes-of-stuttering_b_1002687.html?ref=brain


I thought you might be interested in it, although it does summarize the 'The King's Speech'.

The problem with that article is that the psychotherapist is diagnosing a patient as presented in a fictional film.

I have hardly ever known an fictional portrayal to be clinically accurate. Just think of the nonsense that was perpetrated in 'A Beautiful Mind'.

Thanks for the link. I think there's some truth in what the author is saying, but it's wrapped in layers upon layers of rather dangerous nonsense. And he's rightly taken to the cleaners in the comments.... There's a word for people like him, and that word is 'Quack'.

Essentially, it's a bit like me saying something like:
"Here's the current scientific consensus, backed up by actual research by experts, but never mind that, although I've got no qualifications or expertise, here's what I reckon, based upon a few non-referenced and deeply dubious anecdotes"

I've no doubt it's true that the 'psychological' aspects of treating a stammer might well do more good than the 'mechanical' aspects, but then that's a key part of what speech therapists do. That's fine, but the idea that a dysfunctional family or upbringing 'causes' a stammer is an utter pile of sloblocks, and it's something that I find deeply personally offensive on a number of levels.

That the 'dysfunctional family' view is false can be demonstrated pretty readily by the fact that a lot of people who stammer did not have dysfunctional families and/or childhood trauma, and a lot of people who did, don't stammer. George happening to find himself in the centre of that particular Venn diagram proves precisely nothing.

And citing anecdotes about children proves absolutely nothing, because the figures are quite clear on this - 5% of under 5s, 1% of adults. So, if a child has a stammer aged 5, the chances of it going away by adulthood are 80%.

I'd say that's a fair assessment of that theory.

It's like so many other facile 'explanations' - not helpful at all.

I always assumed stammering was psychological because my friend stammers when he talks to people older than him, but not when he talks to people younger than him.

That's a weird one, and I can see why that might make you wonder.

There is a psychological element to stammering, no doubt about it. I find it harder to remain fluent around some people than others - sometimes it's about how relaxed/stressed I'm feeling. I find talking to people with limited English quite hard work - I find myself thinking about the easiest words or phrases to use, and that means that word substitution doesn't work and I stammer more. But it's also something that's now got inside my head as a source of anxiety, which in turn makes it worse. If I stammer once in front of someone or in a particular situation, it's more likely to happen again, and sometimes it's something that just seeps in by association. That's psychological, but the underlying cause is not. No doubt dealing with that stress and anxiety would help, but it won't make it go away.

I'm also a little bit cautious about outsider judgements about whether someone stammers or not. Just because a listener can't hear it, doesn't mean it's not there.

I think there must be both physical and psychological reasons behind this. I have an aunt who stammers - and apparently this occurred after she nearly died from peritonitis during the war - ( she was in an air raid shelter, suffering from appendicitis, so wasn't taken to the hospital until she was very ill indeed) She feels it was the illness that did something nasty to her brain, as she spoke perfectly up to that moment.

a very intersting Entry

(btw, I think the English R is much harder to pronounce than any W can ever be (just read a comment about that on the last page))

Well, the truth of the matter about the causes of stammering is that no-one really knows - though the research is showing reasonably clear pointers to genetic/biological causes.

There's some information on "late onset" stammering here...
http://www.stammering.org/lateonset.html