Handicaps of Childhood

by H. Addington Bruce

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.