Saturday, October 24, 2009

Press release published - Response by Jean-Marc Hild.

The press release has been published in the Luxembourg daily as a response to the factually incorrect statements on stuttering. That's very good news as this will set the record straight on the causes of stuttering and on treatment, and requires a clarification from Hermes and Hild.

I received a very constructive and genuine email from Jean-Marc Hild, Head of the Service Audiophonologique. He basically agreed with what I said in my interview and he also distanced himself from the article and the statements attributed to Georges Hermes on the causes of stuttering. He clearly said that he himself believes that stuttering has a physiological underlying cause. The press release has criticized the statement attributed to him that "using touching the knee or snip the fingers" should be part of the therapy. He explained that he feels treated unfairly because this statement has been taken out of context, as he explained and listed several treatment approaches to the journalist and only mentioned "using touching the knee or snip the fingers" as a useful tool (I do not share this view but it is debatable.) but not the essential part of the treatment which requires looking at the whole person.  The journalist only kept the knee and fingers. As you can imagine, he said that he learned the lesson of never giving a quick interview without checking the written article beforehand! His email and story sounds genuine. He also offered me to visit the institute, and said that he would be very interested in me collaborating with the institute to benefit from my expertise.

I have offered him to make his email public so that his side of the story can be heard.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would suggest that you both proceed with caution concerning this collaboration.