Wendell Johnson
Wendell Johnson was a stutterer. He spent most of his life trying to find the causes and cures for stuttering, but his academic career encompassed much more than any one particular issue.
Born on a farm in Kansas, Johnson transferred to the University of Iowa as an undergraduate specifically to get help with his stuttering and finished a degree in English. He stayed to complete a master’s in psychology in 1929 and doctorate in psychology in 1931. His master’s thesis, “Why I Stutter,” was commercially published.
He became a research associate at UI thereafter. Because there was no research in this area, he became his own guinea pig. He experimented with trying to change his handedness, with enforced silences and with forcing himself into public-speaking engagements. He challenged various archaic theories such as those that postulated that a physical or mental defect caused stuttering.
During the course of his work, he eventually conquered his own stuttering and delighted in public speaking.
His research was the first and the most extensive and resulted in breakthroughs in understanding that part of the equation was the relationship between stutterer and listener. That stuttering exists first in the ear of the listener and then is judged by someone who is then responsible for creating the problem.
In 1947, he was named a full professor and head of the UI program in speech pathology.
He developed popular courses in semantics that forced students to examine the ways they communicate. The course resulted in his book “People in Quandaries” published in 1946 and widened his fame and influence. His book, “Your Most Enchanted Listener,” followed in the same vein.
Johnson was almost universally described as a warm, kind and energetic man. He and his wife, Edna, had two children, one of whom is Nicholas Johnson, the former chairman of the FCC and a UI law professor.
But his legacy is not without controversy because of a 1939 graduate study conducted by one of his students, Mary Tudor. Dubbed “The Monster Study” by critics, it used two groups of orphan children to study stuttering. One group received positive reinforcement and the other group negative reinforcement. A lawsuit filed by some of those in the study was settled in 2007.
UI’s speech and hearing center is named after Johnson.