even more resolutely your will not to do it. Sooner or later
-usually sooner-you will eliminate the bad habit.
Let's consider a few of hundreds of possible
examples:
Take stammering. There are many ways to cure
stammering. All these cures are relatively easy, since phys-
ical defects are not usually involved at all. Stammering is
caused by "tensing-up" to the point of immobilizing or
"blocking" the normal, but highly complex, ·speech ap-
paratus. The basic cause is self-consciousness and fear of
repeating the embarrassing experience of stammering which
by repetition has become an uncontrolled speech habit and
a "conditioned response" to speaking to others. The direct
cause is the blocking of the normal sequences of the speech
impulse.
Many speech clinics use "Negative Practice"
to cure stammering. In these speech clinics, the stammerer
is required to deliberately and consciously stammer each
and every word he speaks or reads. He actually practices
stammering! He deliberately and consciously causes vocal
blockage of every syllable of every word. He must always
be acutely conscious that he is deliberately forcing himseH
to speak improperly-to stammer- and that he is con-
trolling and directing this wrong method.
When he is fully aware that he is in complete,
deliberate control of his stammering and that he is con-
sciously forcing the vocal-blockage cause of his stammering
-then he can consciously stop it! From then on it is simply
a matter of learning the proper use of the voice in speaking
and in overcoming self-consciousness in talking to others,