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FAULTY VISUALIZATION EXPLAINS ALL PHENOMENA:

Upon this basis of an involved visualization all the intricate phenomena of stuttering may be explained. Let us take some of these up in detail.

THE START. Visualization processes are a matter of growth through exercise and development and use from the sensory area mostly of the eye. If these processes in their early start and evolution receive a setback through the treatment of people in the environment, such as interruptions of their early speech efforts, constant inattention of those to whom they speak, and persistent refusal by older people to answer questions propounded or the allowing of the little one to ask the same question without hopes of answer for a great number of times, these visualization processes receive a setback. This kind of treatment in the home is one of the chief causes of the slump of visualization processes. Another cause is hearing other stutterers interrupt their own visualization processes as they stutter; and still other minor causes may be almost any psychic trauma; these traumata, such as an operation, an accident or a severe illness, are sufficient to bring to the surface or intensify a growing lack of visualization that has been started by bad environment long before.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF STUTTERING. When the habit of visualization is lessened, the action upon speech is the same as the withdrawal of an inhibiting or regulating reflex arc.

It is thus that visualization processes act like reflex inhibition. When visualization is present a higher inhibition arc is functioning and we have a normal speech as a consequent reflex expression. When and in proportion as visualization

is absent this higher inhibition arc is not functioning; and the speech thus uncontrolled flies away in spasms which we call stutter. It should be called an exaggerated or uninhibited speech reflex.

The stutter, then, is merely the externalization of an exaggerated reflex of motor speech, exaggerated through the loss of the inhibitory action of a more or less weakened visualization process.

Not only does this explain the phenomena at large but seems to be a satisfactory explanation for all its intricate, minute details. Some examples may, perhaps, be welcome at this point. I say to two stutterers: "Tell your first name." One of them stutters and the other one does not. On furthering questioning, it is found that the one who did not stutter visualized, and the one who did stutter did not visualize.

CONCRETE: These conditions are also seen when stutterers talk about concrete and abstract matters or when they promulgate some important plea that cannot be visualized. On concrete matters that can be easily visualized the stuttering is gone; and on abstract matters where visualization is hard, the stuttering again appears.

ANGER: In anger, when an intense visual picture is presented and occupies the mind, there is then no stuttering, and also in other similar situations there are periods when the individual is abandoned to some visual concept which acts in the same manner.

SINGING: We all know that stutterers can sing without stuttering. The process here is a similar one; only that there is held up over the speech before utterance an auditory image of a melody in place of the visual image as held in normal speech. This auditory image may be more easily applicable as supplying the needed inhibition reflex arc than the visual because it is nearer to the speech area.

PRAYER: For the same reason prayer is uttered without stuttering when there is faith enough in a God to hold an image of Him during utterance. There may also be other images held during prayer.

FAMILIAR SIGHTS: Familiar sights are less stuttered upon than the detailing of situations that are less familiar

and therefore can be less well visualized. This is also true of sights that have been recently seen or that have been repeatedly seen, or that in some other way have been made intense as pictures in the visual field.

AS CURE PROCEEDS: In the process of recovery where visualization is seen to increase as the stutter decreases, there is another illustration where this visualization attitude explains the whole situation. I have taken a severe stutterer and told him a story that could be well pictured, got him to work up the pictures properly by several complicated processes (which we will not consider now) and when he had them well in hand, I have seen him stand up and relate the story from beginning to end with little or no stuttering If at any point he would trip up, the inevitable confession would be that at that point he dropped the picture, or, in other words, the visualization could not be held over in its inhibitory action; and therefore the stutter came. On further request to-hold it over that point, the same passage would be again expressed smoothly if he succeeded in holding the picture.

This constancy, this presence and absence of the picture, its presence to make smooth talk and its absence to cause stuttering, is so constant at every turn of the situation, that I would offer it as a new interpretation of all these phenomena. I know of no other interpretation that can explain everything under one head as does this absence, weakness or interruption of visualization processes.

TERMINOLOGY. We have found in our orientation tests that in a vague way the visualization was at fault. We have also found in normal individuals that a marked visualization was an automatic process that preceded speech, and lasted during utterance; and we have found in the long series of stutterers that visualization is entirely absent in severe cases; that it is weak in milder forms; that it is intermittent in most cases, and that on words that are smooth it always appears, and in occasional stutter it is as occasionally absent.

We have also found that the form of visualization common in normal speech is the visualization of eye sensations; that in unusual situations we may have visualizations from

other sense areas, such as the ear, taste or smell, but these are the rare exception.

From all this data it would naturally follow that some sort of term is needed to designate this condition. Last year I probed to find such a term without much success.

At present I see no reason why it should not be called an Asthenia; it is surely the weakening of a mental process that is strong in normal individuals. The evidence here presented shows that. I doubt whether there is any marked pathological change, since the individual may be educated out of it; but this does not necessarily follow as proven with my dog in Berlin.[2] As a general designation, then, I should consider Asthenia as apropos.

One objection to this is that the weakness is by this terminology lacking in localization. Our data above has shown us that the location of the trouble is visual; that is, it is situated about a centre of sensory registration that deposits data from the eye; this must naturally then be located somewhere in or near the cuneus. We could therefore add to the terminology this idea of a minute localization and call it a Centre Asthenia.

Some may prefer to carry the matter one step farther and add the name of the centre in which this weakness is located, but I fear if I take this step and complete my terminology by the word "Visual Centre Asthenia," it will, as such, not cover quite all the cases, for I find that sometimes the visualization is absent in other areas as well, and also the holding of an emotion of pleasure or pain and of other dominating mental attitudes that are sometimes visualized would not, therefore, be included. I would therefore retract the broader claim in order to place the term on a conservative basis and call the essence of the lesion simply no more or less than a Centre Asthenia. As well as visual Asthenia, the following terms might be considered as applicable: collaborative centre asthenia; imaginative centre asthenia; visual creative centre asthenia; picture producing centre asthenia. We say neurasthenia when the trouble is not in the nerves as such, so much as it is in the collaborative centres. More of this later. Here in stuttering the trouble is also collaborative, and we can be still more definite than

that and say the trouble is with the collaboration of visualization. So if I were forced, however, to choose one term from all these, my choice would be "Visual Centre Asthenia." This indicates a new and rational treatment. But of this later.

SUMMARY: Psychoanalysis reveals stuttering as some vague trouble in the personality.[1] Psychological Analysis shows stuttering is an absent or weak visualization at the time of speech. This new concept of stuttering as faulty visualization may be called Visual Centre Asthenia. This lack or weakness in visualization accounts for all the numerous phenomena of stuttering in severe, medium, or mild cases. A new treatment is indicated.