Here's a long excerpt from "Redefining Stuttering" by John Harrison: > This is what happened to the young man in the following story who had spent his entire life living conforming to an image of the “good boy.” The young man was a client of William Perkins, Ph.D., former director of the Stuttering Center at the University of Southern California, who says this was the only person he’s ever known who started out as a severe stutterer and suddenly underwent a spontaneous recovery. Perkins recalls: >A young, handsome, successful architect who still lived with his mother, he had never had a date. He was a gentle, grateful, soft-spoken giant who women found very attractive, but who was too timid to pursue their interest. Our sessions were on Monday and Thursday evenings. They dealt frequently with the restrictions he felt stuttering imposed upon him. For several weeks, I had been countering with the observation that he might be hiding behind stuttering. He would thank me profusely each time, as he would back out the door. About a half year later, after what I thought had been a typical session at his one-word-per-minute rate, I remember thinking as he left how stark the contrast was between his immaculately groomed appearance when silent and his chaotic appearance when struggling to speak. I was totally unprepared for what happened next. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, literally. I hardly recognized him when he arrived for his next session. He looked as if he had been hit by a truck. He was utterly disheveled, unshaved, uncombed, distraught, with gray bags under his eyes, and wrinkled clothes looking as if they had been slept in, which they had. Equally shocking was his agitation. He seemed calm, usually, except when speaking. But not this time. He was in a state of acute anxiety. His agitation and appearance were shocking enough. What was even more shocking was his speech; he was completely fluent. He had gone to bed as usual after our Thursday meeting. He reported no inkling of what was about to happen. He called his office Friday morning, which was his customary technique for assessing how severe his stuttering was going to be. To his amazement, there was no stuttering. He felt that heaven had opened and granted his lifelong wish. Still, he knew it wouldn’t last, so he stayed home that day in order to call every friend he could think of. He wanted to enjoy his fluency while it lasted. When he awakened Saturday, he expected to be stuttering again except that he was not. He was still fluent, so he began to experiment to see if he could stutter. He could not. By bed time, apprehension had set in. He fully expected this bonanza to end, but what if it did not? He had no idea how to cope with such uncharted territory. Sunday picked up where Saturday left off. Now he was truly frightened at the prospect of not being able to stutter. By Sunday night, he said he felt as if he was “stark naked in Times Square.” He stayed in a state of stutter-free high anxiety for a month. My only clue to the next turn of events was his dwindling gratitude for my observations. As anxiety subsided, a personality inversion appeared. Gone, along with stuttering, was Mister Nice Guy. Instead of gratitude, my even looking as if I was going to make an observation set off snarling responses. He took an apartment, bought a Thunderbird convertible, and set about conquering the female population of Los Angeles. About two years into this spree, one of his conquests conquered him. (From Tongue Wars by William H. Perkins, published by Athens Press, Inc. Reprinted with permission.) >In this case, the startling transformation was apparently prompted by a realization, perhaps built up over time through therapy, that the young man no longer had to govern his life according to other people’s expectations. He no longer had to maintain his traditional beliefs of the goody-good who kept his wild, seething, dynamic self in chains. At some point this realization reached “critical mass,” and there was a perceptual shift. He no longer had to hold back who he was and what he felt. Lo and behold, he created another default that gave him a lot more room to maneuver and to act in a way that was congruent with his authentic self.