Admitting that most writers consider stuttering a symptom of neurosis, nonetheless Mass favors the supposition that it results from organic damage to the nervous system. Scant and wispy evidence from the neurological literature is quoted. Statements such as 'besides these primarily organic cases of stuttering there are certainly also some of psychic origin, the result of imitation' and 'only in rare cases is emotion the primary cause in young children', indeed raise a quizzical eyebrow. But perhaps it falls with the reflection that, being glacial, the advance of psychiatric thought contains many fragments of by-passed battlegrounds.