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This book, written by the director of the Los Angeles Speech Correction Clinic, is for stutterers, beginners and old-timers, their families and friends, and is apparently a
type of self-help volume. The author estimates there are well over a million stutterers in the United States, and feels that
By explaining here the nature of this disorder, its cause and treatment, it is believed that parents of children who are in the primary stages of stuttering can become sufficiently well informed from these pages to enable them to establish a speech-healthy environment for their youngsters and so prevent the further development of unnecessary troubles.
He adapts the notion that there is always hope for stutterers and directs his book towards this end.
The first section deals with the speech organs and speech reproduction, and here simple descriptions of anatomy, nervous function and emotional blockages are undertaken. The work of Wendell Johnson is highlighted, and the author follows Johnson in believing that stuttering or blockage is a diagnosogenic disorder in the sense that the diagnosis of stuttering is one of its causes. He discusses hi detail voluntary aspects of blockages and the fact that the blocker reacts not only to the basic cause but to the blockage itself. He feels every stutterer should know:
The very things he does, when anticipating blocks, to enable him to produce words fluently, produce blocks instead.
He does unwittingly the very things he does not want to do in order to avoid doing them.
The more he tries not to block, the more he blocks.
The less he tries to avoid blocking, the less he blocks.