Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

May 23, 1950. THE MOTHER IN THE ETIOLOGY OF STUTTERING. I. Peter Glauber, M.D.

Dr. Glauber concludes that the nuclear etiologic factors in the stuttering syndrome lie in specific elements in the personality structure of the mother. This is based on an extensive interview study of the family constellations of seventy-five stutterers and material from the analyses of stutterers and their mothers.

Because of her relation to her own parents the mother had to possess and control both husband and child. There were feeding difficulties based on the mother's fear of being devoured by the child. The mothers regarded speech as an aggression.

Analytic material from stutterers revealed that the stutterer felt a oneness with mother. There was a wish to be incorporated by the phallic mother: the body image of the stutterer himself was only a part object, ablated breast or phallus. Separation thus caused anxiety. Normal behavior was blocked because activity was too aggressive while passive aims were too dangerous. Patients tried to provoke both incorporation and ejection, particularly in the transference. Separation from the mother was felt as a hostile act, being ejected unready into the world by her.

Analytic material from mothers indicated a strong death instinct. There was a phallic body image with fantasies of returning to the womb. Oral and phallic characteristics were mixed. These patients tended to be depressed. There was oscillation between feared feminine passivity and the phallic defense; also oscillation between goodness and badness, especially in the part objects, phallus and breast. There were two images of the body, one an identification with the phallic mother and the other as a castrated part object separated from mother. The greatest fear was of oral aggression. They feared their own daughters' masturbation and castration problems. They had symbiotic needs and needs to destroy this union by oral aggressions. Pregnancy helped complete the phallic b