place, she reported that the attacks had not come back again.
Of course it may readily be acknowledged that this method does not allow
a sharp demarcation line between its various factors. It cannot be
denied that an element of straight suggestion may be included. The man
whom I train in the forming of a new antagonistic motor response feels
it of course all the time also as a silent suggestion to overcome the
old disturbance. It is thus to a certain degree impossible to say where
the effect of the discharge ends and where that of the hidden suggestion
begins. Yet there certainly cannot be any doubt that this revival of the
first experience and its improved discharge works directly towards the
removal of the troublesome symptom.
Abnormal fear is also the essential factor in most cases of stammering.
The patients usually know it themselves. For instance, a lawyer writes
to me:
"I have been a stammerer the greater part of my life and have
visited every stammering school in the country, but the relief
obtained has been temporary and in most cases I was not benefited
at all. I am convinced that stammering is due wholly to an abnormal
mental condition, which consists of an unreasoning fear that takes
possession of the individual when he attempts to utter certain
sounds. It is simply a lack of confidence inspired by numberless
failures to articulate properly and is not caused by any organic
trouble, because, taking my own case for example, I can at times
talk as fluently and easily as anyone. I am firmly convinced that
stammering can be cured by hypnotic suggestion. If you could get me
in the hypnotic state and suggest to me repeatedly that from
thenceforth I would have easy fluent speech, I feel absolutely
certain that such would be the case."
Or an engineer writes to me:
"At times I stammer very badly. In an ordinary conversation it is
scarcely perceptible, but it is almost impossible for me to make an
explanation or relate an incident or tell an anecdote. I began to
stammer when I was about seven years of age--I am twenty-nine
now--and continued until I was seventeen, when I broke myself of it
by reading aloud. It came back on me about a year ago, at which
time I was laboring under a very severe nervous strain on account
of business matters. I have since tried to break myself of it in
the way that I did at first, reading aloud, but have been unable to
do so. Can it be cured by hypnotic treatment or suggestion? Can any
hypnotist of ordinary ability do it?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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