STAMMERING
VII
STAMMERING
THERE lies convenient to my hand at this moment a thin, pamphlet-like volume that tells the story of one of the strangest, among the many singular and tragic blunders which medical science has made in its progress to knowledge. It is a translation from the German of Doctor J. F. Dieffenbach's "Memoir on the Radical Cure of Stuttering." Assuredly, Dieffenbach's "cure" was radical enough, for it consisted in nothing less than the excision of a large, wedge-shaped section from the stammerer's tongue! In this little book, published in 1841, and embellished with several ghastly full-page engravings, is described, with great professional gusto, the first of these terrible operations as performed, without the merciful aid of any anesthetic, on an unhappy boy of thirteen. The result was a "complete success." Says Dieffenbach, writing a few weeks after the operation:
"At the present time not the slightest trace of stuttering remains, not the slightest vibration of the muscles of the face, not the most inconsiderable play of the lips. His speech is, throughout, well toned, even, and flowing."
Thus was inaugurated a period of butchery that lasted until—almost before the year was out—it was observed that those "cured" by this sanguinary means usually began, before long, to stammer as badly as ever, and also that those who were not "cured" had a tendency to die. Yet Dieffenbach was no charlatan, no "quack." He was a reputable surgeon who honestly believed that he had discovered the true remedy for stammering. And, if the passage of time has intensified the tragedy and absurdity of his method and has relegated his glowing account of it to a place in the literature of medical curiosities, there is this to be said of him—that he has had plenty of successors who have erred almost as seriously in their attempts to solve the problem presented by the widespread and baffling malady of stammering.
In fact, up to within quite recent times the record of the struggle against stammering has been one of continuous failure. There has been a steady accumulation of methods of treatment, from surgical operations of a less drastic type than Dieffenbach's to the use of various articulatory and respiratory exercises and devices, without any appreciable effect in the diminution of stammering. Even to-day the great majority of physicians and lay specialists—to whom, by a sort of tacit agreement, the medical profession has largely relinquished the task of dealing with stammering—labour to next to no purpose. At this very moment there are in the United States at least three hundred thousand persons who stammer, fully half of whom stammer so badly that they are severely handicapped in the gaining of a livelihood. Thousands of these have resorted to medical advice, or have attended so-called schools for stammerers, with lastingly beneficial results to few. Small wonder that there is, among stammerers and their friends, a tendency to believe that stammering is one of the hopelessly incurable maladies of mankind.
And this would undeniably appear to be true, as regards many stammerers. On the other hand, it may confidently be said that nearly all cases of stammering are actually susceptible of marked improvement, often amounting to 75 or 90 per cent. of a cure; and that a number of cases can be completely cured. Such a statement, to be sure, could not have been safely made even a few years ago. This for the reason that only lately has there been any really systematic effort by scientifically trained investigators to study the phenomena of stammering, with a view to ascertaining, with scientific exactness, its true nature and causation.
Stammering, it has long been recognised, is not a malady of uniform symptomatology, like tuberculosis or typhoid fever. No two stammerers stammer precisely alike. They stumble over different letters and sounds; time, place, and circumstances have varying effects on the degree of their stammering; and the physical spasms and contortions that so often accompany this trouble differ in different stammerers. There is, too, a great variation in the onset of stammering. Mostly, it is true, it manifests itself in childhood, from the age of four to eleven. But it may not set in until much later in life; and, when it does begin in childhood, it begins under much diversity of conditions.
Sometimes a child stammers almost as soon as he has learned to speak, though seldom, if ever, coincident with the learning. Often, the first appearance of stammering follows some disease like measles or diphtheria. Or, again, a child who has been speaking quite well, suddenly begins to stammer, and persists in stammering, after being brought into contact with people who are themselves stammerers.
"I was entirely free of stammering," declares a clergyman, in a typical statement, "till I was five years old. At that time of life there was a gentleman who occasionally came to my father's house, and stammered very badly. I distinctly remember one afternoon trying to imitate him; when, unfortunately, he heard me, and was very indignant. So ashamed were my parents at my conduct that, after he had gone, I was taken to task and punished severely for it. Ever since that night I have been afflicted with this most distressing malady, in spite of all my efforts to overcome it."
Compare a statement by a Philadelphia physician, Doctor D. Braden Kyle:
"Several years ago I saw three interesting cases of stammering. Two of the cases were imitation. These two lads, who were associated with a boy several years older, the worst stammerer I ever saw, clearly imitated him. As they were constantly together, the imitation was almost continuous. They certainly developed into expert stammerers. In less than two years they were confirmed stammerers, and it was impossible for them to speak at all without stuttering and stammering."
Facts like these, I repeat, have long been observed and commented on by specialists in the treatment of stammering; but they have, for the most part, been dismissed as mere "oddities," while emphasis has been laid on the single fact that, in the majority of cases, stammerers have had parents or other relatives who themselves stammered. "Heredity," consequently, has been assumed to be the one and sufficient explanation of all stammering; and it has also been assumed that what is inherited is either an anatomical or a physiological defect. Hence, in too many instances, the use of the surgeon's knife; and, hence, the invention of innumerable systems designed to train the stammerer in the correct use of his breathing and articulating organs—in a word, systems intended to teach him how to talk.
But, as even the most enthusiastic exponents of these corrective systems are now beginning to appreciate, whatever else the stammerer may need, he does not need to be taught how to talk. For he can talk well enough on occasion. Nothing is more significant, from the standpoint of assisting to a clear understanding of the nature of stammering, than the fact that there are uncommonly few stammerers who have any difficulty in speaking when nobody is with them. On this point, every stammerer with whom I have been in touch is in remarkable agreement, and others who have had a far wider acquaintance with stammerers testify to the same effect. For example, Mr. Charles L. Rowan, of Milwaukee, a gentleman who has stammered for years and has made a close study of the subject, informs me:
"When I am alone—and the same is true of other stammerers—I have no speech difficulty whatever, and can talk or read aloud for hours with ease. It is only when I am with others that I halt and stammer in my speech. Sometimes I talk in my sleep, and the folks tell me I do not stammer then. But, if I am dreaming, and in the dream imagine myself talking, it is always in a stammer.
"I have also noticed that most stammerers talk better when the subject is light and frivolous than when it is something serious. And they talk better when conversing with people whom they regard as inferiors. I know a man who is a section foreman, and he says he can give orders to his negro and Mexican labourers perfectly, but if the roadmaster comes along he cannot talk to him at all."
And a stammerer from Spokane, Washington, informs me:
"I would like to say that there are periods when I can talk much better than for corresponding periods. Indeed, there are times, generally a few days at a time, when it is most difficult for me to talk with even a slight degree of correctness; and, then, there are periods of as long, or longer, duration when speech seems to flow with more ease, though never perfect, except for a few words in succession."
More than this, according to one diligent investigator, the majority of stammerers fail to stammer if addressed in such a way that their replies are made without their realising that they are talking. Says this observer:
"Suppose a stammerer is engaged in a deep study and unaware of your presence. You speak to him softly. He answers readily, without hesitation, in an absent manner. Again, you ask a careless question, implying by your manner that you do not expect or desire an answer; to this he quickly and easily replies also. Now, look straight at him and pointedly interrogate him. See, when it becomes necessary for him to speak, how he is thrown into confusion."
It has further been found that most stammerers are at their worst when in the presence of strangers. Some stammer scarcely at all when at home with their relatives and intimate friends. On the opposite, there are some who stammer worse than usual when with relatives. Not so long ago I learned of one stammerer—a young lady who had stammered from early childhood—whose trouble was most in evidence when she was talking with her mother. Almost all stammerers, too, enjoy temporary relief from their speech defect when greatly startled, angry, or otherwise excited.
Decidedly, then, it is not from anatomical or physiological inability to speak that a stammerer suffers. It is, rather, from a psychological inability. That is to say, the facts just mentioned indicate strongly that stammering is primarily a mental malady—that it is due to the presence, in the mind of the stammerer, of some idea or ideas that inhibit the normal functioning of the organs of speech. This conclusion is confirmed by the additional circumstance that nearly every stammerer who has been questioned on the subject admits that he is perpetually tormented by a haunting dread of not being able to express himself clearly to others, and so of exposing himself to their ridicule, contempt, or pity. Many, indeed, affirm their conviction that if they could only overcome this dread they would be free from their affliction. "I believe," is a characteristic utterance of stammerers, "that if I were to wake up some morning with total forgetfulness that I had ever stammered, I should never stammer again."
Still more significant is the fact that, of the many methods which have been invented for the treatment of stammering—and which include such curious devices as beating time with every word, and wearing artificial supports under the tongue—all have had to their credit a certain—however small—proportion of genuine cures. This would suggest, not that they have been intrinsically valuable, but that, in the cases cured, they so impressed the mind of the stammerer with their therapeutic virtue as to banish his long-entertained belief that he could not talk like other people. For that matter, recent experiments go to bear out the view that almost any method, no matter how fantastic, will cure some stammerers, if only they have a lively faith in its efficacy.
For example, there was once brought to the Boston City Hospital a woman of thirty-five, who, though formerly speaking without any difficulty, had begun to stammer in a frightful manner, following a violent quarrel with her husband. She could utter scarcely a sound, except weirdly inarticulate noises, and these only by a great effort. The physician to whom her case was entrusted soon became satisfied that she was suffering mainly from a profound belief that she would never be able to talk again; and he therefore endeavoured to reason her out of this, but to no purpose. Finally, he abandoned the attempt, and, after leaving her pretty much to her own devices for several days, impressively said to her one morning, in a tone of great authority:
"Well, Mrs. Blank, I have been looking carefully into your case, and I find there is one way certain to cure you. It may be a little painful, but I know you will not mind that, as long as it is going to make you entirely well."
So saying, and with an air of the utmost confidence, he began to apply to her an electric current, just strong enough to make her wince. Only a few treatments of this sort were found necessary to enable the hospital authorities to discharge her as cured—and she stayed cured.
Of late, consequently, with growing recognition of the dominant psychic factor in stammering, there has been an increasing tendency—though as yet it is far from universal—to employ psychological methods in treating stammerers. The effort is made to instil confidence in the sufferer—to convince him that he need only exercise his will power to bring about his own cure. In a good many cases, and frequently with gratifying results, resort is had to hypnotism, the "suggestion" being reiterated to the patient, while in the hypnotic state, that in the future he will experience none of his overwhelming sensations of dread and anxiety and will speak as fluently as persons who have never stammered. Or he may be treated by psychic re-education, which consists essentially in the development of volitional control by suggestions tactfully imparted in the ordinary waking state. All of which unquestionably marks a tremendous advance over the theories and practices based on the alleged anatomical or physiological defects of stammerers.
There is this to be added, though, that, sanely beneficial as is the psychological treatment of stammering, it often happens that the confidence-inspiring suggestions given to stammerers do not "take." The stammerer, albeit he may perhaps show improvement for a time, remains without clear articulatory power. When this occurs, the natural tendency among those treating him—in view of the demonstrated truth that stammering is the effect of a peculiar state of mind—is to throw the blame on the patient instead of on the method. Yet, actually, it is the method that is at fault—or, to be exact, it is the failure to apply the method, which itself is thoroughly sound—in such a way as to remove from the stammerer's mind not only the fear that haunts him and helps to perpetuate his stammering, but also the ideas in which his stammering originated.
Here we come to the central fact in the whole problem of stammering—a fact which, when it is widely enough known and appreciated, is certain to exert a far-reaching influence on the prevention of stammering, as well as its cure. Until very recently, few have been aware of this fact except a small group of foreign investigators, physicians with a psychological training, whose special business it has been to determine scientifically the possibilities, the limitations, and the exact procedures to be followed in supplementing, by wholly mental treatment, the ordinary medical and surgical treatment of disease. Impressed by the predominance of the mental factor in stammering, these investigators were particularly impressed by some of the peculiarities mentioned above—as, the ability of almost every stammerer to speak well when alone or when in a state of abstraction. Such peculiarities, they knew from long experience, bore a strong resemblance to oddities in the behaviour of victims of hysteria, psychasthenia, or other psychoneurosis, in all of which disorders there is a tendency for symptoms to disappear when the sufferer's attention is momentarily withdrawn from them. Accordingly, it seemed to the investigators quite possible that, in the last analysis, stammering was not so much a disease in itself as a psychoneurotic symptom.
They were well aware, for reasons already set forth in these pages, that psychoneurotic disorders have their origin in emotional disturbances of one sort or another, which, occurring to a person of nervous temperament or rendered neurally unstable by a faulty upbringing, react adversely on the entire organism. Exactly what happens is that the emotional disturbance—whether it be a fright, a grief, a worry, or what not—while perhaps completely forgotten by the victim, so far as conscious recollection is concerned, remains subconsciously alive in his memory, is ever seeking to emerge again into conscious remembrance, and, failing to do this, takes its revenge, so to speak, by the production of disease symptoms ranging from mere eccentricities of thought and behaviour to symptoms mimicking those of true organic disease.
Also, the investigators knew that the particular form these mentally caused symptoms take depends chiefly on the kind of suggestions received from the sufferer's environment. If he chances, for instance, to have a relative or a friend who is a paralytic, he may, in time, develop pseudosymptoms of paralysis himself. Or, if his nervous equilibrium be sufficiently upset, he may develop them from merely hearing or reading about them. Whatever the symptoms he manifests, his malady is curable—precisely as it was produced—by mental means alone. Often, a counter-suggestion, to the effect that henceforth the psychoneurotic person will be perfectly well, is enough to work his cure. Or, permanently curative effects may be had only when, by special techniques devised for the express purpose of rummaging through the subconsciousness, the forgotten memory, or memories, responsible for the psychoneurosis are brought to light, and the specific suggestion directly or indirectly made that from that time they will do no harm. Sometimes, experience has shown, the mere recalling of them to conscious remembrance is enough to put an end to the disease symptoms they have caused.
On the view that stammering is similarly a psychoneurotic symptom, and that, when it fails to yield to treatment by general suggestion, it is because the subconscious memories underlying it are too intense to be thus subdued, this group of investigators undertook to treat it as they would any stubborn psychoneurosis. The outcome of their experiments has been such that I feel justified in declaring that science has at last penetrated to the true inwardness of stammering. These psychologically trained physicians have taken stammerers who had well-nigh exhausted their hopes and their resources in a futile quest for normal speech, and, after subjecting them to the searching methods of psychological analysis, have sent them on their way rejoicing, either in a perfect cure or in a lasting improvement far beyond their expectation.
Citing a few instances of actual occurrence, a German member of the group, Doctor B. Dattner, was once consulted by a stammerer of thirty-six, who had been burdened by his speech defect from boyhood. He had first stammered, he told Doctor Dattner, after an attack of diphtheria, at the age of nine; and he had for some time been treated on the supposition that the diphtheria had caused a peculiar kind of throat paralysis.[13] This treatment failing, he had sought relief by other means, always without more than temporary benefit. Like many another stammerer, he spoke of the abnormal dread that harassed him, especially when with strangers, and expressed the belief that if he could conquer this he would be free from his stammer.
"Ah, but," Doctor Dattner pointed out, "do you not realise that, after all, your dread is caused by—not the cause of—your stammer? It has helped, doubtless, to keep it alive and to aggravate it. But it has not been the thing that originally made you stammer. That we must seek elsewhere."
"You mean in the attack of diphtheria?"
"Not at all. I mean in something that happened to you before you had diphtheria—something which so exceedingly distressed you that it was continually uppermost in your thoughts, and which finally worked on you so much that when your nervous system was weakened by the diphtheria it gave rise to your stammering. Now, we are going to try to discover what that something was, and, when we have done so, it will be possible really to cure you. Can you recall any particularly disagreeable incident of your childhood occurring at any time before you were ill of diphtheria?"
"No," said the other, after a little reflection, "I think that I was perfectly happy as a child, and certainly I was treated kindly."
"Just the same, something must have happened at that period to disturb you very much. Let us find out, if we can, what it was."
To this end, Doctor Dattner now made use of the "free association method of mental analysis," which consists in requesting the patient to concentrate his attention on his symptoms, and state without reserve the thoughts coming to him in connection with them—the theory being that, if there is any exceptionally distressing idea underlying them, the current of his spoken thoughts will, soon or late, reveal it. In the present instance, this method at first brought forth only trivial and commonplace memory associations. But, after a time, a reminiscence of intense emotional colouring suddenly emerged.
It related to an episode of the stammerer's eighth year, shortly before his attack of diphtheria, when he was pounced upon and frightened almost into convulsions by a huge black dog. This had virtually faded from his conscious memory; but now, as he sat in the quiescent mood enjoined on all patients undergoing psychoanalytic treatment, it welled up into full recollection, every detail of it being vividly recalled—the sight of the dog, the emotions of fear and horror, the hysterical shrieking that followed his escape, the difficulty his parents had in convincing him that he was unharmed. He used to lie awake, he remembered, thinking of the dog; he used to dream of it; the thought of it was always with him.
"Precisely," said Doctor Dattner, drily. "And, you see, the thought of it is still with you, for look how graphically you have described it all. The trouble is that it has been leading an independent existence, as it were, in the depths of your mind, with all its original emotional intensity. Your stammering, I can assure you, has been nothing more than the external manifestation, the symbol, of its continuing presence, and of the deadly power it has had over you—sensitive, impressionable child that you must have been. But I can also assure you that your stammering will now come to an end; for we have not only found its cause in the subconsciously remembered shock of your boyhood, but we have actually removed that cause by the very fact of recalling it to your conscious recollection and, consequently, finding a normal outlet for the repressed emotions."
Altogether, it had required just six hours of psychoanalysis, at the rate of about an hour a day, to recover this horror-encrusted memory of the stammerer's childhood. But, with its recall, and strikingly validating Doctor Dattner's confident prediction, he once more began to enjoy the blessing of a facile, flowing speech.
In another case—treated by the American neurologist, Doctor Coriat, who has made extensive use of psychoanalytic methods—the patient was a man of middle age, who stammered not only when he spoke, but even when he wrote, repeating letters and syllables in anything he tried to put on paper. He had been to two stammering schools and had been discharged from both as cured, but each time had speedily relapsed.
As in the case of Doctor Dattner's patient, psychoanalysis demonstrated that the causal agency of his stammering was a lingering subconscious remnant of distressing emotional states experienced in childhood. Only, in this instance, the distressing states related, not to an unexpected, stupefying fright, but to painful reveries indulged in as a child, and occasioned by certain unpleasant stories he had been told regarding the end of the world and the fate of the sinful.
"These," he recalled, "took complete possession of my mind. I became convinced that the end of the world could not be long delayed, and I was in an agony of terror. Constantly I kept asking myself what I should do to escape destruction. I knew I was a bad boy—very bad. Nothing could atone for the sins I fancied I had committed. But I kept my fears to myself; I did not dare confide them to others. Night and day I worried about them, picturing to myself the terrible happenings of the approaching time of doom."
Until psychoanalysis brought them up to the surface of consciousness, he had long ceased to think of these foolish imaginings of childhood. He had as entirely forgotten them as though he had never entertained them. But, as the event showed, it was their malign influence, working on a nervous system already infirm by defects of inheritance, that had produced a psychoneurosis which, in his case, had taken the form of a speech disorder through the suggestions unconsciously absorbed by watching his mother, who likewise suffered from a peculiar variety of stammering.
Another of Doctor Coriat's patients—a young woman—impressed him, from the day of her first visit, with her extreme timidity and self-consciousness. Both were so pronounced as to be abnormal, and he immediately suspected that they, in common with her stammering, would be found linked with subconscious memories of occurrences that had tended to deprive her of proper appreciation of her abilities and rights. She proved a good hypnotic subject, and, knowing that in hypnosis long-forgotten events are easily recalled, Doctor Coriat questioned her as to her previous history.
"Can you remember," he asked her, "just when it was that you began to stammer?"
"It was when I was a very little girl."
"Had any one or anything greatly frightened you before then?"
"Yes."
"What was it?"
"It was my father."
Then followed, in answer to further questions, a long series of reminiscences of the severe discipline imposed on her in earliest childhood by her father, a stern, hard man. As she related them, she seemed to feel again all the emotions that they had provoked—the shame, grief, fear, doubt, longing for sympathy. Literally, she lived through them anew, and to the trained understanding of the physician it was evident that she had never really forgotten them—although, in the waking state, she was able to recall her childhood only vaguely—but had subconsciously dwelt on them all her life, to the wrecking of her self-confidence, as well as the causing of her troubles of speech. Only by completely blotting them out, through psychotherapeutic means, could her restoration to health be effected.
Similarly, it has been found that emotional disturbances are at the bottom of stammering when it develops, not in childhood, but in adult life. A particularly instructive case, because of the insight it affords into the ingenuity with which the expert psychoanalyst gets at the truth in even the most complicated cases of functional nervous or mental disorder, is one that was successfully handled by Doctor A. A. Brill, already mentioned in these pages, a pupil of the pioneer Austrian psychoanalyst, Doctor Sigmund Freud. Doctor Brill's patient was a man who, after an early life untroubled by speech defect, had begun to stammer from no discernible cause, and had been stammering for a number of years before he consulted the New York specialist. Several weeks of psychoanalysis elicited nothing that would account for his trouble, and Doctor Brill was in much perplexity, until he one day noticed that the words on which his patient chiefly stammered were words beginning with or containing the letter "k." It occurred to him that this letter might have some significant association in the stammerer's mind, but the latter denied that it could have.
However, after psychoanalysis had proceeded further, Doctor Brill learned that there had been an event in the patient's life, though occurring some little time before the development of the stammering, that had made a most painful, even agonising, impression on him. He had been engaged to a young woman who had eloped with his closest friend; and this had so wrought on him that he had vowed never to utter her name again.
"And what was her name?" asked Doctor Brill.
The stammerer stared at him and burst into a violent tirade.
"Haven't I just told you," he cried, "that I have taken an oath never to speak it? What business is it of yours, anyway? What bearing can it have on my trouble of speech?"
"Only this bearing—that it may be the means of curing you. Come, now, I am sorry you have taken an oath, because you will have to break it and tell me the name."
"I'll die first."
With this he seized his hat and dashed out of the doctor's office in a frenzy of indignation. Doctor Brill did not see him again for a month. Then he returned, repentant. He would tell the name, he said, on condition that Doctor Brill did not write it down in the detailed record which, as is customary, he was making of the case. To this a prompt assent was given, and the troublesome name was as promptly made known. As Doctor Brill had expected, it began with K. He then said, leaning forward and showing his sheet of notes:
"See, I have kept my promise. I have called her Miss W. And, now, we'll soon have you quite well."
But on his next visit the patient was in despair. He was, he protested, stammering worse than ever. Words that had never given him any trouble before were now almost unpronounceable by him. On investigation, it turned out that they were, one and all, words in which the letter "w" had a place.
"At last," said Doctor Brill, "we know for a certainty what has made you stammer. It was the foolish oath you took, which served to sustain in your mind the memory of the terrible experience you went through on account of your faithless sweetheart. Vowing never to utter her name, yet thinking constantly of her, you have unconsciously made it difficult for you to utter even words in which the most prominent letter of that name—its initial—occurs. And, now, since she has become Miss W. to you, as well as Miss K., you are stammering on words with "w," as well as words with "k." We must free you from the torment of that vow and of the pent-up emotions that go with the forbidden name, and then you will never stammer more."
To this mode of dealing with stammerers could anything be in stronger contrast than the brutal Dieffenbach technique? The latter exemplifies, if in an extreme form, the folly of attempting—as is so often done, even to-day—to treat stammering on a basis of imperfect observation. The former shows the happy results that may be obtained when it is attacked in the light of thorough investigation. No; it is neither by the surgeon's knife nor by the use of mechanical appliances or physiological devices that stammering is to be really conquered, but by intelligent application of the wonderful remedial measures which modern medical psychology has worked out.
Stammering, to recapitulate, is not at bottom an anatomical or physiological trouble. Its individual peculiarities, varied as they are, all tend to prove that it is a mental malady, symptomatic of a psychoneurosis having its origin in subconscious emotional states. The rôle that heredity plays in it is merely to provide the soil in which it can flourish. Of wholly mental causation, it is curable by mental means, whether by faith in the efficacy of any method of treatment, however intrinsically worthless that method may be; by "suggestions" of a general character; or, if needful, by specific recall and eradication of the "forgotten memories" that underlie it.
Lest, however, I raise hope unduly, I would at once add that not even the most expert practitioners in psychoanalysis, or in any other psychological mode of treating stammering, are justified in guaranteeing an absolute or an "approximate" cure in every case. Experience is showing that the "emotional complexes" responsible for stammering are, in many cases, so deep-seated—and often so entangled in later complexes—that it is virtually impossible to get at them by any present-known method of mind tunnelling. And, in many other cases, the process of psychoanalysis is so slow and tedious that the stammerer is all too likely to lose heart and abandon the effort at cure.
Consequently, in respect to stammering, prevention becomes of more than usual importance. And the prevention of stammering, I trust I have already made amply clear, rests chiefly with parents. It is again primarily a question of guarding the young from needless emotional stresses, of early training to foster in children calmness, courage, self-confidence; so that, when inevitable shocks and trials come, they will have no power to overwhelm the mind and give birth to stammering or any other neurotic evil.
FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP
VIII
FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP
"EVERY ugly thing told to the child, every shock, every fright given him, will remain like minute splinters in the flesh to torture him all his life long."
Thus said the famous Italian scientist, Angelo Mosso, a good many years ago. The facts of more recent research into the psychology and psychopathology of childhood, as reviewed in the preceding chapters, vindicate Professor Mosso's statement to an extent and in ways undreamed of by him. Nor is it only the emotionally disturbing things seen, heard, or experienced by children that may have a decisively adverse influence on their development. Harm may similarly and equally be done by the books and stories they read, even to the extent of provoking or accentuating nervous maladies. Particularly mischievous in this respect, because of their wide reading by children, are certain fairy tales which many parents—nay, I might say, nearly all parents—consider quite suitable for young readers.
You smile incredulously at the suggestion that a fairy tale could possibly affect a child harmfully. Still more preposterous seems to you the idea that the harmful effects of fairy tales—if such harmful effects actually occur—may be carried over into adult life. But, listen:
To the Doctor Brill of the letter "k" stammering case just narrated, there once came a young man of twenty-eight, afflicted with a strange and alarming malady.
"Doctor," he said, "I want your candid opinion as to what is the matter with me. Physically I feel well, but mentally I am badly off. In fact, I fear I am insane, and dangerously so. For a long time I have been tormented by a strange desire to bite and stab people and to torture them in all sorts of ways. I yearn for the times when everybody carried the dirk and dagger and could kill when offended. As yet I have restrained my mad impulse, but I am in terror lest I give way to it. Is there anything you can do to help me?"
The mere fact that he thus clearly recognised and candidly confessed his mental state was in itself a hopeful sign. But Doctor Brill was well aware that it might be extremely difficult to cure him, perhaps impossible. Everything would depend, in the first place, on whether the young man were actually insane or merely the victim of a psychoneurotic obsession. If the latter, there was a possibility of his being cured, provided the subconscious region of his mind could be explored with sufficient thoroughness to get at and root out the ideas underlying and responsible for his dangerous obsession. Satisfying himself that it actually was a case of psychoneurosis, Doctor Brill began the work of mental exploration. And, knowing that submerged ideas are pretty sure to reveal themselves, directly or indirectly, through the character of a person's dreams, he began by directing the young man to make a written record of his dreaming.
"Whenever you have a dream," he told him, "I want you to write it down as soon as you awake, and bring me an account of it."
Before long, Doctor Brill was in possession of a remarkable collection of dreams, many of which, as he had expected, were of an exceedingly unpleasant character. Analysing these dreams, a curious fact at once became evident—namely, that the patient's mental life was largely occupied with imaginings that related, not to the world of everyday existence, but to the people and events of mythology and fairy tale.
Always, too, in his subconscious imaginings, ideas of death and violence were uppermost. During the dream-analysis he recalled with special vividness such themes as the beheading of Medusa, the cruelties of Bluebeard, and the freezing to death of Eva, heroine of Bryant's "Little People of the Snows." Even trivial details in the settings of these and similar fairy tales were remembered and brought out in his dream-associations with a fulness that astonished the patient himself. Dr. Brill comments:
"He was very imaginative, so that the harrowing adventures enacted by fairies, genii, and Greek deities, on which he was constantly fed, were deeply interwoven with his own life, and he built up for himself a strange, archaic world. He liked to be alone, and often wandered away from his companions, to act through, in his own way, the adventures of which he had just heard or read.
"He himself traced the selection of his profession—that of an actor—to these boyish actions when he tried to imitate the fleet-footed Mercury, some character from fairyland or the "Arabian Nights," or some savage Indians. He thus imagined himself flying, and beheading monsters above the clouds, or penetrating to the centre of the earth in the form of some wicked magician, all the time passing through the most harrowing scenes. By a process of condensation, he fused ancient characters and episodes with persons and actions of reality, but his fancies usually began with some god-like or demon-like myth and gradually descended to human beings.
"During the first few weeks of the analysis he was in the habit of merging into a dreamy state while reproducing associations, and often became so excited that the work had to be temporarily interrupted."[14]
It was unnecessary to seek much further for the explanation of the obsession of torture. In large part, at all events, this was quite evidently the expression in consciousness of the gruesome images with which the patient's mind had been filled by the tales told him in his childhood. Though faded from conscious remembrance, they had remained with him subconsciously, to influence for evil the current of his conscious thoughts. Or, to put the matter tersely: Had tales of cruelty and violent death not been told him in his early days, he might never have been afflicted in manhood with his morbid longings to inflict pain.
Of course, if this case stood by itself it would be of no great significance. But the fact is that during the past few years—or since physicians began to appreciate the part played by childhood impressions in causing mental and nervous disease—evidence has been accumulating to indicate that the almost universal custom of telling fairy tales to children does entail grave risks to their character and their health. The child of normal nervous constitution is likely to be affected only in character; the supersensitive, neurotic child may be hurried, by the tales he hears or reads, into some more or less serious mental or nervous malady.
Let me hasten to add that this does not mean that the fairy tale should be entirely banished from the literature of childhood. It means only that parents should exercise more discrimination than they usually show in selecting fairy tales for their children. The rightly chosen fairy tale is indeed an almost indispensable aid in the early education of children, for reasons that are admirably summarised by an American educator, Mr. Percival Chubb, in these words:
"One value in fairy stories for the young is that they embody and commemorate the man-child's first rude assertion of the lordship of mind, and subserve the development of a later sense of spiritual freedom and autonomy. Another is that they are expressive, as all art is expressive, of the idealistic hunger at the heart of men. Again, as forms of art, they select and co-ordinate those facts which bring out the spiritual meanings of life. That is, they release from the unsifted materials of experience the imprisoned 'Soul of Fact.' And not only do they embody the basic moral insights and interpretations of childish man, but they express the simple and larger emotions, and so feed the heart of the child. They quicken, too, the imagination—that master-faculty without which the sympathy which is man's highest and richest endowment fails of fruition. They are an aid to culture by giving an outlook upon all nations and kindreds, all countries and conditions of life. Finally, along with their allied forms of literary invention, the myth, saga, fable, and so on, they are a condition to understanding the innumerable allusions with which the literature of the world is studded."[15]
All this is assuredly the function of the fairy tale, but frequently it is frustrated by the kind of fairy tales children are allowed to read. For one thing, the imaginative faculty is scarcely stimulated in a healthy fashion when the mind is led to dwell constantly, as in the case of Doctor Brill's patient, on thoughts of cruelty and pain. Nor can the fairy tale be said to have exerted a healthy influence in such a case as that represented by a little girl who was brought for treatment to another medical psychologist, and whose morbid irritability, disobedience, and crying spells were, by psychological analysis, traced to an excessive jealousy of her brother. In the course of the analysis the discovery was made that the girl had frequent dreams of seeing both her mother and her brother cruelly treated. In one dream, witches shut her mother in a cave to starve to death, and threw her brother into a large caldron of boiling water, leaving her to perish miserably.
"This dream," the little girl naïvely explained to the physician who was analysing her mental states, "is just like the fairy tales I read."
Other dreams of cruelty were likewise found to be drawn from the reading of unpleasant fairy tales. So that, although in this case jealousy was undoubtedly the chief cause of the nervous condition for which treatment was required, fairy tales also played a part in directing the course of the little girl's morbid thinking and her difficult behaviour. Warned by this revelation of the dream-analysis, her physician made it a point to notify her mother that unless steps were taken to change the girl's reading matter she might develop traits of character—harshness, coldness, indifference to the sufferings of others—that would handicap her throughout life.
Or, instead of causing an abnormal harshness, the fairy tale abounding in gory elements may breed an equally abnormal timidity, passing sometimes beyond the category of a character defect to that of positive disease. A typical instance is found in the experience of a young New York boy.
"Our son," his parents told the physician, to whom they took him for treatment, "has suddenly become excitable and nervous, afraid to go outdoors alone, and still more afraid to sleep alone. If left to himself after having been put to bed, he often wakes out of a sound sleep, shrieking for us. When we go to him he seems dazed, and for some moments does not recognise us. But he cannot tell us what has frightened him, and in the morning does not remember his alarm."
From this brief description the physician at once recognised that he had to deal with a case of what is technically known as pavor nocturnus, but better known to the lay public as "night terrors." Having had a thorough training in medical psychology, he was well aware that night terrors are grounded in disturbing experiences of the waking life. Accordingly, he questioned the parents closely.
Insistently they denied that anything had occurred to cause their son undue anxiety or alarm. Then the physician resorted to psychological analysis of the boy's mental states and, before long, made the discovery that his mind was full of frightful images of giants, wizards, and slimy monsters. Promptly he summoned the father and mother to a conference, and asked them:
"Have you been reading or telling fairy stories to your boy lately?"
"Why, yes," the mother replied. "He is passionately fond of them, and I tell him some every day."
"And what, may I ask, are the stories that you tell to him most frequently?"
"'Jack the Giant Killer' is one. He is also particularly fond of 'The Boy Who Did Not Know How to Shiver.'"
"Well, madam," said the physician, gravely, "I must ask you either to stop telling him fairy tales or to choose for him fairy tales with less gruesome elements in them. He is a boy of nervous temperament, and, figuratively speaking, he has been poisoned by the fear-images that are so abundant in the stories he has heard. Take him out into the open air, turn his thoughts to other things, and be more discreet in your choice of reading matter for him. Unless you do this, there is danger that he will yet suffer from something far more serious than night terrors."
The truth of this last statement may be concretely re-enforced by another citation from recent medical experience—the case, not of a young boy, but of a man of thirty, who came to Doctor Brill with a remarkable story.
"Ever since my boyhood," he related, "I have fainted at seeing blood. Now I feel weak and dizzy, and sometimes I faint outright, at anything which merely brings into my mind the thought of blood. I am afraid to talk to certain people because they are likely to speak about accidents which make me think of blood. The sight of a man who looks like a doctor suggests an operation, and at once I feel faint. On one occasion I fainted away while my blood pressure was being taken. It was not that I was afraid of having my blood pressure taken; it was simply that the word 'blood' brought on the usual attack. You do not appreciate the difficulty I have in telling you all this. Every time I mention the word to you I have to get a grip on myself. I fear I must seem very weak and foolish, but I cannot overcome the horror I feel. Unless you help me, I do not know what I shall do. I cannot go on this way indefinitely."
In answer to Doctor Brill's questions, he insisted nothing had occurred in his life that could give rise to his "phobia," or morbid dread of blood. He had been in no bad accident, had undergone no serious surgical operation, had witnessed no sanguinary scenes of any sort.
"Nevertheless," Doctor Brill assured him, "there is a logical reason for your abnormal fear. It is evidently buried deep in your mind; but there are ways of getting at it, and get at it we must."
Psychological analysis, patiently carried on for many days, ultimately brought the truth to light. His phobia, it appeared, had its real starting point in early childhood, and, not least, in certain sensational fairy stories read to him by a nurse when he was quite young—stories which he himself continued to read at a later age.
"These bloody and horrible stories," to quote Doctor Brill, "made a strong impression upon him. He would form fancies about them on going to sleep at night, substituting himself for the hero."
"Bluebeard" was one story that especially impressed him. Another was a charming tale about a false princess who was rolled in a barrel, into which long pointed spikes had been driven.
As he grew older, there had been the usual fading from memory of these stories and the imaginings to which they had given rise. But, subconsciously, they had never been forgotten, and out of them there had gradually developed the obsessive and seemingly inexplicable dread of blood.
In another case, the "Bluebeard" story responsible for the night terrors of a sensitive little girl, remained so indelibly fixed in her subconsciousness that in adult life she often had nightmares, in which, to her great distress, she was attacked by men who were "frightful looking on account of their blue beards." Even more impressively illustrative of the permanence and possible ill effects of tales of the horrible heard in early life is the case of a man fifty years old, who had to receive medical treatment because he "could not fall asleep without living through—for at least an hour, sometimes even longer—some distorted story from fairy books or mythology."
That common phobia of childhood, fear of the dark, is often traceable to fairy tales, and, in many cases, persists in some degree through later life. Let me quote, on this important point, the testimony of a Washington physician, Doctor T. A. Williams, who has made a special study of nervousness in childhood:
"Morbid fears are a great distress to many people. They have nearly always arisen in early childhood, and have been inculcated by injudicious nurses, tales of goblins and fairies being most prolific in this respect.
"The ineradicability of fears, when inculcated in early childhood, is clearly illustrated by a Southern lady who, even in advanced age, dared not go alone into the dark, although she had long ceased to believe in the stories which had made her afraid to do so. She realised this so forcibly that she would not permit her three daughters to be told any of the alarming stories which most Southern children learn. This resulted in the girls never having known what it meant to be afraid of the dark. Indeed, it was the habit of their school fellows to send them off into dark and eery places to show off their powers."
And, from one of the most experienced psychiatrists of the United States, Doctor W. A. White, superintendent of the great Government Hospital for the Insane, at Washington, we have this emphatic statement as to the general relationship between fairy tales and mental diseases:
"You will find, not infrequently, that the precipitating factors in psychoses come from the books of fairy tales which your children are allowed to feed upon."
Of course, as already intimated, a mental overthrow from the hearing or reading of fairy tales presupposes an undue impressionability on the victim's part. But how are parents to determine whether or no their children's psychic make-up is such as to render them immune from the possible mind-enfeebling effects of "horror tales"? And, in any event, let me repeat with all the emphasis at my command, there is reason to believe that no child can escape some stunting or distorting of character if brought up on a diet of ultra-sanguinary fairy tales.
As I write these lines, a stupendous war is raging in Europe with a ferocity that appals the outside world. Especially atrocious is the policy of one of the embattled nations, formerly regarded as a leader in modern civilisation. To attain its ends, this nation has violated treaty obligations as though they were of no consequence whatever; it has ruthlessly slain innocent noncombatants, even the citizens of neutral countries; wherever it has been victorious, it stands accused of vile brutalities. In its attitude towards its own soldiers it has displayed an almost incredible callousness, hurling them to certain destruction with cold-blooded nonchalance.
Beholding all this, the people of other lands marvel and question. That, in the twentieth century, even under the stress of war, a civilised nation should thus revert to barbarism seems to baffle explanation. For myself, however, I am convinced that at least a partial explanation is to be found in the fact that the offending nation is one among whom the myth, the legend, and the fairy tale have pre-eminently flourished.
In the stories which distinguished scholars have eagerly assisted to make available to the youth of this nation, indifference to human suffering and human life are too often conspicuous elements. Too often they are tinged by more than a suggestion of bloodthirstiness, cruelty, and the principle of revenge. When the childish mind has been fed upon these, stimulated by them to unhealthy fancies, and re-enforced in those instincts inherited from the primitive, which it should be the business of education to weaken and repress, is it to be wondered at that, in the crisis of war, there has been a veritable relapse to primitive savagery?
In some degree, moreover, all the warring nations have been bred on fairy tales, and, in some degree, all have exhibited the same tendency to the cruel ways of primitive man. Throughout the world a fairy tale reform is needed for the development and maintenance of a true civilisation.
But, mark you, it is a reform that is needed, not a banishment of the fairy tale. As some one has well said, a child who never hears a fairy tale is developing a tract in his soul that, in later life, will grow barren. More than this, cases are on record indicating that unless the child's instinctive craving for the romantic and the ideal is satisfied by well-chosen fairy tales, he may gratify this craving in ways that shock his elders.
I will give one instance, by way of concrete illustration. For knowledge of this I am indebted to President Hall, of Clark University, and I give it in President Hall's own words:
"Two immigrants in New York brought up their daughter, born here, on a diet of literal truth, and tabooed fiction, poetry, and imagination as lies. She was bright, at twelve had never read a fairy tale or a story book, but was continually dreamy and ardent-souled, with a great passion and talent for music. Her mother once told her that she might, perhaps, play some time to the President. Soon after, at the dedication of Grant's Tomb, she saw Mr. and Mrs. McKinley. One day, soon afterwards, she rushed in, breathless, saying that they had visited her school, heard her play, might adopt her, would give papa a place in Washington, and so on; but Mrs. McKinley was out of funds, and her husband was in Washington.
"Accordingly, Gertrude's father drew a hundred from his fortune of fourteen hundred dollars in the bank and sent it by his daughter, who brought back costly flowers. Upon more excuses, more money was loaned, and more presents were sent to Gertrude's parents—a canary, a puppy, a diamond ring. Gertrude conversed intelligently on political topics, and her father gave up his position, as he was about to accept a five-thousand-dollar job in Washington.
"Then came the crash. Gertrude had never met the President or his wife, but had made lavish presents and had bought many articles, which she had stored with a neighbour; and, to her parents' especial horror, had laid in a large stock of fairy tales and other fiction."
With justification, President Hall adds: "This points a moral against the pedagogic theory that would starve the imagination."[16]
In truth, the cultivation of the imaginative faculty by means of the fairy tale is one of the great opportunities of parenthood. Only see to it that the fairy tales employed for this purpose do not reek of brutality and gore, of treachery and cunning.
And see to it that elements like these are not unduly conspicuous in any other kind of tales you put into the hands of your children. Give them no books to read, tell them no stories that may react on a sensitive mind to the development either of callousness or fear. Be careful even with regard to the tales you tell your children in the course of their religious education. Dwell on the rewards of goodness rather than on the punishments of sin. In the religious instruction of the young, as in all other instruction, over-emphasis on the grim and the terrifying may have unfavourable consequences, persisting to the end of life.
Recall, if you please, the case of the overworked Boston young man, mentioned in "Psychology and Parenthood" (p. 273). Obsessed with an idea that he had committed "the unpardonable sin," he was surely drifting to some institution for the insane, when he was fortunate enough to come under the care of a physician familiar with the new psychological discoveries and methods. Recall this young man's autobiographical statement, given to his physician, after the latter had helped him back to health:
"My abnormal fear certainly originated from doctrines of hell which I heard in early childhood, particularly from a rather ignorant elderly woman who taught Sunday-school. My early religious thought was chiefly concerned with the direful eternity of torture that might be awaiting me if I was not good enough to be saved."
You are careful as to the food you give your child's body. Be no less careful as to the food you give his mind.