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My approach to this book was not one of eagerness or excited anticipation, but then contact with people who stutter whilst producing compassion usually produces annoyance, irritation and embarrassment. But as I read on and this conflict emerged as the central issue my interest was provoked and then held.
In Dr. Glauber's opinion the fundamental problem in stutterers is the faulty dissolution of the primary identification with mother, the mothers of stutterers alternately cling to and reject their infants, the baby's separation from the mother apparently begins prematurely, but is then delayed. The underlying problem is seen as the mother's own problem with separation from her mother, which is reproduced in her relationship with her own children, particularly sons, the incidence of stuttering being 4 times as frequent in sons as daughters. Dr. Glauber's basic tenet is that the significant predisposing factor in stuttering is serious trauma during the early months and that stuttering is essentially a family disorder. Speech is described as an ego function along with perception, thinking, reality testing and that stuttering is a disturbance of the mental apparatus, not the vocal apparatus. Feeding difficulties were almost always present during the first year of the child's life. The special characteristic of this, which lead onto all the subsequent conflicts, was the ambivalent alternation between aggressive feeding gestures and then sudden withholding of food (the breast, bottle) i.e. the mother was a ‘stuttering’ feeder. Subsequently the stutterer is seen as becoming his mother's ‘spokesman’, the anxiety being that his speech may reveal her ambivalence, the pent-up rage and defiance and the opposing wish to remain dependent