THE START. Visualization processes are a matter of growth through exercise
and development and use from the sensory area mostly of the eye. If these
processes in their early start and evolution receive a setback through the
treatment of people in the environment, such as interruptions of their early
speech efforts, constant inattention of those to whom they speak, and
persistent refusal by older people to answer questions propounded or the
allowing of the little one to ask the same question without hopes of answer
for a great number of times, these visualization processes receive a
setback. This kind of treatment in the home is one of the chief causes of
the slump of visualization processes. Another cause is hearing other
stutterers interrupt their own visualization processes as they stutter; and
still other minor causes may be almost any psychic trauma; these traumata,
such as an operation, an accident or a severe illness, are sufficient to
bring to the surface or intensify a growing lack of visualization that has
been started by bad environment long before.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF STUTTERING. When the habit of visualization is lessened,
the action upon speech is the same as the withdrawal of an inhibiting or
regulating reflex arc.
It is thus that visualization processes act like reflex inhibition. When
visualization is present a higher inhibition arc is functioning and we have
a normal speech as a consequent reflex expression. When and in proportion as
visualization is absent this higher inhibition arc is not functioning; and
the speech thus uncontrolled flies away in spasms which we call stutter. It
should be called an exaggerated or uninhibited speech reflex.
The stutter, then, is merely the externalization of an exaggerated reflex of
motor speech, exaggerated through the loss of the inhibitory action of a
more or less weakened visualization process.
Not only does this explain the phenomena at large but seems to be a
satisfactory explanation for all its intricate, minute details. Some
examples may, perhaps, be welcome at this point. I say to two stutterers:
"Tell your first name." One of them stutters and the other one does not.
On furthering questioning, it is found that the one who did not stutter
visualized, and the one who did stutter did not visualize.
CONCRETE: These conditions are also seen when stutterers talk about
concrete and abstract matters or when they promulgate some important plea
that cannot be visualized. On concrete matters that can be easily visualized
the stuttering is gone; and on abstract matters where visualization is hard,
the stuttering again appears.
ANGER: In anger, when an intense visual picture is presented and occupies
the mind, there is then no stuttering, and also in other similar situations
there are periods when the individual is abandoned to some visual concept
which acts in the same manner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account