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 causes of stuttering advocated by the six expert contributors to this symposium range from psychological to organic, and the therapies from psychoanalysis to conditioning. Much emphasis is placed by some writers on the decisive importance of the parents' response to the mild stutter most children at some time manifest. One contributor thinks stuttering is probably akin to epilepsy. Peter Glauber, at the other extreme, totally fails to mention the possibility of an organic factor. One's theory of stuttering seems, in fact, to be like one's idea of God: personal, more or less dogmatic, unsatisfactory to others. Probably the best sections in the book are those by Eisenson, who argues for a 'perseverative' theory of stuttering, and Van Riper, who with candor and humor describes year-by-year his revisions of theory and therapy,—a self-appraisal as much needed in speech therapy as in psychotherapy. Van Riper achieved no definitive answers but he provides a model for which psychiatry might be grateful.
What to do for a stuttering patient? The book offers much to think about, to quarrel with, and to enjoy; but the answer is not here or, probably, anywhere else in the present state of our knowledge.