You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The author concentrates on the scoptophilic problem in reading disabilities. The active aspect of looking necessary to establish the automatic skill of reading rather than the reading content is felt to create the major difficulty. Clinical material is adduced to illustrate the major conflict between active and passive trends and the consequent inability to identify with one's own sex. Nonreaders often have a greater reading vocabulary than is suspected, but alphabetical letters and words lend themselves to quick association with underlying fantasies and make resource to denial in the service of keeping such fantasies repressed, a constant feature.
A central notion in the fantasies is that of the phallic or castrating mother. Stupidity equated with craziness, badness, inability to read, is felt to result from masturbatory activity with injury displaced to the head, but at a deeper level is regarded as a symbolic castration, both ideas serving as a denial of real castration in either sex.
An understanding of the denial of voyeurism and compensatory exhibitionistic activities or fantasies should have important implications for reading therapy and for the teaching of reading in normal situations. Practical comments are offered on both these aspects.