An interesting case-history of a twenty-one-year-old stutterer, a lame

youth whose unsatisfactory home circumstances militated against complete cure. At three years old a girl cousin playing with him trod on a percussion cap. Terrified by the explosion the child at first could not speak at all, and subsequently only with a stutter. The anal basis for the symptom was provided by the variations in attitude of the mother, an extremely and openly anal character, to the little boy's anal misdemeanours. She laughed and joked about them before visitors, but subsequently punished him severely. The patient's later history confirmed to the analyst the importance of the anal factor in stuttering, as well as in the seductions experienced, linked with a sense of inferiority, from which the patient sought refuge in a power to torment his listeners (anal sadism). In recognizing oral and respiratory erotic components of the anal erotism displaced on to the mouth, Dr. Fuchs does not mention oral screaming sadism.