WELCOME TO THE FREE STUTTERING E-BOOK COLLECTION


JOHN C. HARRISON, PUBLISHER
RUTH MEAD, EDITOR
RICHARD PARENT, TRANSLATOR

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR:

We hope the free e-books on this website will be helpful to you.   

This website was inspired by my own urgent but unsuccessful search for books on stuttering, not only during the years I stuttered, but also during the years after I stopped stuttering.  When my stuttering disappeared, people I knew were stunned and immediately tagged my transformation with words like "miracle".  For some reason the label "miracle" bothered me.   While it's true that positive changes in my speech were occurring spontaneously, without consciously planning or choosing this new natural and uncontrolled  way of speaking,  I knew that "miracle" was not an adequate word for what was happening...and continued  my eager search to understand what  was behind my newfound fluency.

Even then,  I saw stuttering as a symptom, more than anything else....a symptom of something deeper (just as red blotches are a symptom of measles);  and just as one would not deal primarily with red blotches when dealing with measles, it seemed equaly silly to me to deal only with the behavior of stuttering.  My logic went a little like this: if stuttering is a symptom of something deeper, then elimination of stuttering also represents something deeper...and that "something" fascinated and mystified me.  Before long, this fascination  turned into an intense passion that drove me to look for the explanation of what had seemed to mysteriously "happen" to me.   (One example:   I had not been able to make a phone call for the first almost-34 years of my life, and suddenly I was able to speak fluently on the phone almost constantly in my new business.)  So my search continued.

And then it happened.  One day on the internet I saw a reference to a book called "REDEFINING STUTTERING:  What the Struggle to Speak is Really All About" by John C. Harrison (offered on this website).    It was a summer evening and I printed out all 600-some pages of it, took it downstairs to my favorite chair, forgot to eat dinner and read until the last page.  I felt as if I had, at last, come "home".  The ideas in that book confirmed my own experiences and discoveries, connecting everything into one understandable "whole."  I realized that overcoming stuttering wasn't a miracle after all!  I had simply and inadvertently addressed my old-fashioned dinosaur belief system, had "accidentally" discovered a few powerful metaphors that changed my way of looking at speech, had stopped forcing words through clenched muscles, and finally, had opened my eyes to my own experiences, writing down my own way of looking at things (even though my own observations clashed with every theory I had been taught).

Since Harrison's book was such a milestone in my own life,  I continued to look.  I found more articles and books written by pioneers in the stuttering world:  Barbara Dahm's original and highly successful approach to stuttering; Dr. Bob Bodenhamer's NLP approach to stuttering; Alan Badmington's mind-blowing recovery from severe stuttering to a well-known public speaker; Dori Holte's understanding of the problems of children who stutter (as well as their parents); Pam Mertz' work with women who stutter; Geoff Johnston who successfully deals with PWS in Australia;  and Anna Margolina who stuttered when she first arrived here from Russia a few years ago, and has now not only eliminated her stuttering, but has evolved into an NLP therapist, hypnotist,  and captivating public speaker.  

I could go on.    

The e-books we include differ considerably in size.  Some of the ebooks are very small, around 10 pages, and some are full-size books.  Most ebooks are written by people intimately acquainted with stuttering (either stuttering themselves, or having overcome stuttering.)  Some e-books are contributed by non-stutterers who deal with people who stutter on a daily basis in therapy...or as a parent.)

Richard Parent is not only a recovered stutterer himself and contributed his own e-book to this collection, but there are many of his French translations under the menu title: "Traductions Françaises." 

If you want to add your voice to this body of work, please go to the "You Are Invited" page to learn how to do that.

Thank you.

Ruth Mead