10.6 The dragon of stuttering: foe becomes friend.
Juvenile participants in a summer course for stutterers have created a sculpture. It is a dragon on a pedestal and one can easily imagine what the dragon stands for. The art-object has taken shape under the encouragement of the recreational staff of the two-week program. The participants spend their free time with healthy and creative activities while the therapy staff meets to discuss the plans for the following treatment session.
Self-expression starts the process towards knowing yourself. These youngsters have, at an early stage in their treatment, projected a part of their revulsion of stuttering in an ugly shaped object. The monster inside themselves that they have been fighting the greater part of their lives, now stands in front of them, ready to be challenged and to begin a dialogue with. It will take days, months or years of remedial experiences before they will be fully aware of some surprising facts:
1. the monster is a part of me, it is of my own making. It has been my way of responding to particular pressures in my early childhood.
2. my battle to slay the monster has been futile: the more I fight my dragon, the stronger it has grown.
3. since I have accepted that the dragon is a part of me of my own making, I can look at him more closely and without fear - he will loose his power over me. I will get to know him better and rename him: Avoidance (Map 10, 8), Agonism(6.5.2). Now I can restructure my life, venturing out of the old defence lines and working on new zones that serve adaptation as well as defence.
10.7 The iceberg of stuttering: 9/10ths of stuttering is below the surface.