STUTTERING

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 765, 11 September 1929, Page 11

STUTTERING

Doctor's Analysis of Causes CHIEFLY FEAR COMPLEX Questioned at a demonstration at the Medical Congress in Sydney, a schoolboy, who is undergoing treatment for stuttering, said he “cauglu it” from another boy at school. The shy little fellow who made this admission, to the amusement of the doctors in the audience, was one ol two boys present. Mr. T. Garnet Leary, of Melbourne, who gave a paper on stammering, sympathetically told the boys, who had places on the platform, that he used to stammer so badly that boys used to laugh at him. “When do you stammer most?” he asked one of the boys. “When I’m in a hurry,” said the little chap. Dr. Leary admitted that he was not fully cured of stammering himself, but said he had relieved himself greatly of the disability. This was apparent from the clearness of enunciation which characterised his address. Stammering, Dr. Leary said, was more prevalent among English speaking than other peoples, and was the outcome of an innate or acquired defect in psycho-physical co-ordina-tion. He made a strong plea for consideration of stammering at an early stage of the defect, which he described as one of the tragedies of life, sapping one’s vital energy, and hindering definitely the full development of one’s native talents. The basis of developed stammering was fear, self-consciousness, and anticipation of failure, with consequent psychic strain and storm. “A fear complex,” added Dr. Leary, “born of recurring failure, is ttio characteristic problem of matured stammering. Relaxation and ease are the essential conditions of relief. Treatment is to be considered iu the light of heredity and environment of the patient.” Dr. Harold Norrie said that education today seemed, in many cases, to have developed into pedagogy rather than into true teaching in the strict sense. Tie explained that stammering was sometimes associated with injury at birth, or with severe fright.