Dave McGuire - Beyond Stuttering: The McGuire Programme for Getting Good at the Sport of Speaking

By John Harrison

My first encounter with Dave McGuire and the McGuire Programme took place at the Fourth International Conference for People who Stutter, held in Linkping, Sweden, during the summer of 1995. As we chatted about common interests, I learned that Dave had previously run an innovative Programme for teenage boys with behavioral problems. Back in the 60s I had been an active sponsor of a similar kind of residential Programme for drug addicts. Both of us had seen that the only way to effect lasting behavioral change was to address the entire person.

Daves approach to stuttering combines his training in psychology with other stuttering therapies and sports psychology. Into the mix also went the know-how gained from his experience of working with difficult teenagers. This eclectic background accounts, in part, for the uniqueness of the McGuire Programme. Its also sets Dave apart from most others working in the field of stuttering remediation.

At the end of our initial conversation, Dave asked whether I would like to stop by and observe a demonstration of his Programme run with several of his graduates. I would indeed, and off we went to his workshop. My first impression of the workshop is still etched in memory a group of men and women in a circle taking deep breaths with belts strapped around their chests. What in the world were they doing? I wasnt sure what to make of it, but I was really curious. During further conversations at the conference, it became clear that Dave and I shared a common view of stuttering, and we promised to stay in touch once the conference was over.

I was intrigued with the McGuire Programme. As someone who had stuttered for roughly 30 years and who had made a full and lasting recovery, I saw a recovery strategy similar to what I, myself, had followed. As an migr to California from New York in the early I960s, I had immersed myself in the personal growth movement that was flourishing on Americas west coast. Id grown up with a very fuzzy image of myself and needed to change many beliefs and behaviors that did not serve me well. In working to build self-esteem and get my own house in order, something very interesting happened: my stuttering gradually slipped away.

According to most speech therapists, this was not supposed to happen. The prevailing belief was once a stutterer, always a stutterer. But that was evidently not true, at least for some people. Over time, I saw that my stuttering was not simply a product of bad speech behaviors, it was also a reflection of who I was as an individual how I thought and felt, how I functioned, what I believed. My speech blocks had everything to do with the system of self that I had created, a system that supported a dysfluent way of speaking. Therefore, to make permanent changes in my speech, I had to address a total system that included my emotions, perceptions, beliefs, intentions, and speech behaviors. And it all had to be brought into alignment.

What so intrigued me about the McGuire Programme was that this was the first Programme Id encountered that took a broad, holistic approach to stuttering and that touched on many of the same issues that I had addressed in my own recovery. Not only did the McGuire Method focus on the speech process itself, it also focused on the underlying factors that supported the stuttering behavior. Even today, several characteristics of the Programme are truly unusual.

• The Programme uses Costal breathing to keep the breath open and prevent speech blocks. The Programme focuses not just on can I speak but on how do I want to speak? Eloquence is a stop on the path to fluency.
• Members do the teaching and coaching there is no professional staff of speech therapists giving teeth to the concepts that (1) the real experts are those who have personally worked through the problem, and (2) best way to learn something is to teach it to others.
• McGuire also has the best long-term follow-up Programme in the world. It is free and open ended. Coaches and those being coached routinely connect by phone and email and those connections often reach half way around the world.