Psychotherapy / Including the History of the Use of Mental Influence, Directly and Indirectly, in Healing and the Principles for the Application of Energies Derived from the Mind to the Treatment of Disease

by James J. Walsh

Fig. 23.—Normal Diaphragm Curve in Normal Breathing. Expiration as we Talk Normally.

Fig. 24.—Curve in Diaphragm Before and During Talking by a Stutterer.

Attention to Something Besides Speech.—The attention must be centered on something besides speech itself. This is the important element in any method of treating stuttering. If it is allowed to occupy itself with that [{578}] nothing will save the individual from getting tangled in the efforts that he makes to co-ordinate the complex movements necessary, though if he would only allow them to proceed automatically, as do the rest of mankind, there would be no difficulty at all. Washington Irving, so ready with the pen, could not utter two successive sentences at a banquet without having to sit down, with expression absolutely inhibited from excitement. Expression, thought, utterance—all may be inhibited by overconscious attention, which may also disturb all other complex activities.

The most interesting methods of treatment for stuttering are those which involve the use of various hindrances to speech and which would seem to be least likely to make it possible for a person already laboring under speech difficulties to talk with more ease. The secret is, of course, that the added impediments so distract the attention of the patient that he is unconscious of the co-ordination necessary for speech and so accomplishes it without difficulty. It is because of over-attention to himself that the disturbance occurs. These methods developed very early in history. We all know the tradition of Demosthenes overcoming his impediment by placing pebbles in his mouth. One of the most earnest advocates of a similar method, who had himself suffered very seriously from stuttering was the Rev. Charles Kingsley, one of the most distinguished of English literary men. He cured himself, or at least greatly relieved his symptoms, by keeping a cork fast between his back teeth.

There have been many other curious suggestions for the cure of stuttering. What was known as the American method had great vogue in the early part of the nineteenth century. It was probably invented by Yeats of New York, though it came to be known as the Leigh method. Yeats, himself a physician, seemed to fear that he might fall into professional disrepute if he advertised the method in any way, so he had his daughter's governess, a Mrs. Leigh, open an institute for the cure of stuttering in which this method was practiced and it proved to be very successful. The entire secret of it was to have the patient raise the tip of the tongue to the palate and hold it there while speaking.

Another mode of treatment that attracted considerable attention consisted mainly of just exactly the opposite maneuver, that is, keeping the tongue as far as possible firmly placed on the floor of the mouth during speech. It is evident that neither of these suggestions does anything more than occupy the patient's attention with an additional activity, so that his speech function may be allowed to proceed automatically of itself, as it will if not disturbed by attention to it and by conscious attempts to regulate the various activities of it. Instruments were invented to help the patients to secure various positions of the tongue. Itard, for instance, during the second decade of the nineteenth century invented a golden or ivory fork to be placed beneath the tongue, so as to support it.

After the various methods of managing the tongue, the most popular curative maneuver has been that of regulating the breathing. During the nineteenth century there were at least a dozen different methods, all of which had a number of reported successes, of treating stuttering by means of breathing exercises.

Very simple methods of diverting the attention from speech are quite [{579}] sufficient in many cases to bring improvement. For instance, the insertion of extra letters that are themselves easy to say between words or preceding consonants that are hard to utter has been a favorite method among the specialists in stuttering. Johann Müller, as I said, suggested an e. Others have suggested an n. Occasionally stutterers themselves form the habit of using an m or a to and find that it aids their facility in uttering difficult sounds over which they would otherwise halt and stutter. A combination of these methods, as, for instance, an e between all words and the placing of an easy n before the most difficult sounds, has been repeatedly revived as an infallible method of treatment.