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.
Stuttering as Emotional and Personality Disorder. [ Ill. Med. Jl., 76: 536.]
Solomon believes that stuttering is a specifically conditioned personality, emotive behavior and speech disorder in the struggle for equilibrium during social converse. It is a type of adjustive behavior. As stuttering is an overactive response of the total personality, there are responses at all levels of activity, depending on the stage of maturation of the individual. The objective phenomena are present in varying degree and quality in the first and recurrent moments of stuttering. They include: (1) activities in the peripheral speech machinery; disruption of coordination of the oral, laryngeal and respiratory systems, with terminal speech block, either clonic and incomplete as in hesitation and repetition or tonic and complete as in failure to produce any sound, (2) skeletal manifestations, with postural, gestural reactions from head to toes, (3) visceral and autonomic responses, from tachycardia to secretory and excretory changes, and (4) physiochemical upheaval, peripheral and central, including electro-encephalographic manifestations. The subjective, so-called mental, phenomena occur in the first moment of stuttering, when there seems to be mainly a state of excitement (which may be preceded or followed by other emotions). With recurrent moments the final product is very complex. Generalized expectancy occurs whenever the stutterer