Fletcher would reserve the word "stammering" for mispronunciation or
incorrect speech, this stutter being anatomical (due to malformation of one
or more organs of articulation) or developmental (due to incorrect
functioning of the organs of articulation resulting in certain cases of
immaturity, such as lisping). Stammering, in this sense, is of no
psychological interest. The reviewer is in favor of employing the terms
"stammering" and "stuttering" synonymously, as is the practice in England
and America. The writer (Fletcher) finds that he cannot accept the Freudian
interpretation of stuttering which has been offered by a number of different
members of that school.
Although the entire paper is of interest and of value to the student of
psychopathology, the purposes of this review can best be served by citing
the following conclusions of the author: The motor manifestations of
stuttering are found to consist of asynergies in the three musculatures of
speech--breathing, vocalization and articulation. Certain accessory
movements, which tend to become stereotyped in each individual and which
consist of tonic and clonic conditions of other muscles not involved in
normal speech, accompany these asynergies. The type of asynergy and more
particularly of accessory movements differ so widely that it is impossible
to state that any special form of breathing, or articulation, or of
vocalization is the fundamental factor in stuttering. Disturbances of pulse
rate, of blood distribution and in psychogalvanic variations, appearing
before, during and after the speaking interval, and the intensity of which
varies approximately with the severity of the stuttering, accompany the
motor manifestations of stuttering. The essential condition in stuttering is
the complex state of mind, the quality rather than the intensity of these
feeling states governing the rise of stuttering. Such feeling states as
fear, anxiety, dread, shame, embarrassment, in fact, those feelings that
tend toward inhibition and repression, are most likely to precede
stuttering, and probably operate in a vicious circle as both cause and
effect. The permanent condition of nervousness thought to be characteristic
of stutterers should be regarded as effect rather than cause. The states of
feeling that have to do with the production of stuttering vary in degree
from strong emotions to mere attitudes or moods, the latter being often so
slight in degree that it is difficult for the subject to report their
presence. Stuttering also seems to be affected by the quality of mental
imagery, by attention and by association. The affective and emotional
experiences associated with the pronunciation of sounds rather than the
nature of the sounds themselves determine the rise of stuttering. The
author's final remarks are: "Stuttering, therefore, seems to be essentially
a mental phenomenon in the sense that it is due to and dependent upon
certain variations in mental state.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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