No abstract

Since antiquity pathologic stuttering has been a dramatic phe nomenon, involving, for example, such prominent personages as Moses, King Charles I, Charles Lamb, and Darwin and having in the United States in our day an incidence of more than one in every 100 individ uals. It has also long been the bete noir of the speech therapist because of both its bewildering plethora of etiologic theory and a lack of demonstrable therapeutic results. With respect to etiology, Van Rip per 1 has observed that lack of a scientific approach to the problem has resulted in sterile research data and has further led to a welter of antagonistic theories whose proponents have spent more time defend ing their positions than in verifying or disproving them. Among the better known etiologic theories are:1. The educational theory which postulates that stuttering is a fortuitously acquired faulty speech pattern that has become fixated through some continuous emotional force such as fear, ridicule, or feelings of inadequacy. The analytictheory which conceives stuttering to be a fixa tion of the speech mechanism at the oral erotic developmental stage. The neurologicaltheory which postulates that stuttering arises from a discordant functioning of paired components of the speech musculature which results from malfunctioning of the thalamus, cere bellum or nondominant cerebrum. The neurotictheory which holds that stuttering is the mani festation of a basic personality problem, a maladjustment to the demands of everyday life. The imagerytheory which attributes stuttering to a lack of visual or auditory imagery.