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The author attributes the development of his insight into the syndrome of stuttering to what he learned from his own analysis and from his patients, but most of all to Horney's theory of neurosis. To this last he devotes the greater part of his book, and he begins almost every chapter with a different aspect of that theory. Thus the syndrome of stuttering is but another example of the dominant theme,—an interpretation of neurotic behavior in general in accordance with Horney's psychology, which is a psychology without instinctual roots, structure, etiologic theory, or genetic development. The great tenets of this psychodynamics include living outside the self, the use of neurotic claims, self-hate and the 'tyranny of the should', alienation, magic, self-effacement, expansiveness, and resignation.
With good psychiatric instinct Dr. Barbara begins by studying the early relationship of parent and child and makes a number of observations that are fresh, interesting, and practical. There is not, however, enough emphasis on the factors that cause the disorder of speech and the structure of the character. The author suggests a 'profile' of the typical relationship between parent and stuttering child, but encounters the dilemma common to delineators of profiles: sharpness of profile is gained by one-sidedness; to be comprehensive is to blur the picture. So he chooses to be one-sided. The same thing happens in the clinical descriptions of how the stutterer feels about his speech, himself as speaker, and his audience, though as far as they go these descriptions are quite valid.
After this beginning, the vexing question of what makes a stutterer involves the author in a losing struggle. After a laudable try at a genetic approach, he proceeds to affirm that he will not try to answer the question of specificity and origin of the syndrome, and that the question need not even be asked; and he attacks those that seek to answer the question. What he actually attacks is an ov