Part 10

Citing a few instances of actual occurrence, a German member of the group, Doctor B. Dattner, was once consulted by a stammerer of thirty-six, who had been burdened by his speech defect from boyhood. He had first stammered, he told Doctor Dattner, after an attack of diphtheria, at the age of nine; and he had for some time been treated on the supposition that the diphtheria had caused a peculiar kind of throat paralysis.[13] This treatment failing, he had sought relief by other means, always without more than temporary benefit. Like many another stammerer, he spoke of the abnormal dread that harassed him, especially when with strangers, and expressed the belief that if he could conquer this he would be free from his stammer.

"Ah, but," Doctor Dattner pointed out, "do you not realise that, after all, your dread is caused by--not the cause of--your stammer? It has helped, doubtless, to keep it alive and to aggravate it. But it has not been the thing that originally made you stammer. That we must seek elsewhere."

"You mean in the attack of diphtheria?"

"Not at all. I mean in something that happened to you before you had diphtheria--something which so exceedingly distressed you that it was continually uppermost in your thoughts, and which finally worked on you so much that when your nervous system was weakened by the diphtheria it gave rise to your stammering. Now, we are going to try to discover what that something was, and, when we have done so, it will be possible really to cure you. Can you recall any particularly disagreeable incident of your childhood occurring at any time before you were ill of diphtheria?"

"No," said the other, after a little reflection, "I think that I was perfectly happy as a child, and certainly I was treated kindly."

"Just the same, something must have happened at that period to disturb you very much. Let us find out, if we can, what it was."

To this end, Doctor Dattner now made use of the "free association method of mental analysis," which consists in requesting the patient to concentrate his attention on his symptoms, and state without reserve the thoughts coming to him in connection with them--the theory being that, if there is any exceptionally distressing idea underlying them, the current of his spoken thoughts will, soon or late, reveal it. In the present instance, this method at first brought forth only trivial and commonplace memory associations. But, after a time, a reminiscence of intense emotional colouring suddenly emerged.

It related to an episode of the stammerer's eighth year, shortly before his attack of diphtheria, when he was pounced upon and frightened almost into convulsions by a huge black dog. This had virtually faded from his conscious memory; but now, as he sat in the quiescent mood enjoined on all patients undergoing psychoanalytic treatment, it welled up into full recollection, every detail of it being vividly recalled--the sight of the dog, the emotions of fear and horror, the hysterical shrieking that followed his escape, the difficulty his parents had in convincing him that he was unharmed. He used to lie awake, he remembered, thinking of the dog; he used to dream of it; the thought of it was always with him.

"Precisely," said Doctor Dattner, drily. "And, you see, the thought of it is still with you, for look how graphically you have described it all. The trouble is that it has been leading an independent existence, as it were, in the depths of your mind, with all its original emotional intensity. Your stammering, I can assure you, has been nothing more than the external manifestation, the symbol, of its continuing presence, and of the deadly power it has had over you--sensitive, impressionable child that you must have been. But I can also assure you that your stammering will now come to an end; for we have not only found its cause in the subconsciously remembered shock of your boyhood, but we have actually removed that cause by the very fact of recalling it to your conscious recollection and, consequently, finding a normal outlet for the repressed emotions."

Altogether, it had required just six hours of psychoanalysis, at the rate of about an hour a day, to recover this horror-encrusted memory of the stammerer's childhood. But, with its recall, and strikingly validating Doctor Dattner's confident prediction, he once more began to enjoy the blessing of a facile, flowing speech.

In another case--treated by the American neurologist, Doctor Coriat, who has made extensive use of psychoanalytic methods--the patient was a man of middle age, who stammered not only when he spoke, but even when he wrote, repeating letters and syllables in anything he tried to put on paper. He had been to two stammering schools and had been discharged from both as cured, but each time had speedily relapsed.

As in the case of Doctor Dattner's patient, psychoanalysis demonstrated that the causal agency of his stammering was a lingering subconscious remnant of distressing emotional states experienced in childhood. Only, in this instance, the distressing states related, not to an unexpected, stupefying fright, but to painful reveries indulged in as a child, and occasioned by certain unpleasant stories he had been told regarding the end of the world and the fate of the sinful.

"These," he recalled, "took complete possession of my mind. I became convinced that the end of the world could not be long delayed, and I was in an agony of terror. Constantly I kept asking myself what I should do to escape destruction. I knew I was a bad boy--very bad. Nothing could atone for the sins I fancied I had committed. But I kept my fears to myself; I did not dare confide them to others. Night and day I worried about them, picturing to myself the terrible happenings of the approaching time of doom."

Until psychoanalysis brought them up to the surface of consciousness, he had long ceased to think of these foolish imaginings of childhood. He had as entirely forgotten them as though he had never entertained them. But, as the event showed, it was their malign influence, working on a nervous system already infirm by defects of inheritance, that had produced a psychoneurosis which, in his case, had taken the form of a speech disorder through the suggestions unconsciously absorbed by watching his mother, who likewise suffered from a peculiar variety of stammering.

Another of Doctor Coriat's patients--a young woman--impressed him, from the day of her first visit, with her extreme timidity and self-consciousness. Both were so pronounced as to be abnormal, and he immediately suspected that they, in common with her stammering, would be found linked with subconscious memories of occurrences that had tended to deprive her of proper appreciation of her abilities and rights. She proved a good hypnotic subject, and, knowing that in hypnosis long-forgotten events are easily recalled, Doctor Coriat questioned her as to her previous history.

"Can you remember," he asked her, "just when it was that you began to stammer?"

"It was when I was a very little girl."

"Had any one or anything greatly frightened you before then?"

"Yes."

"What was it?"

"It was my father."

Then followed, in answer to further questions, a long series of reminiscences of the severe discipline imposed on her in earliest childhood by her father, a stern, hard man. As she related them, she seemed to feel again all the emotions that they had provoked--the shame, grief, fear, doubt, longing for sympathy. Literally, she lived through them anew, and to the trained understanding of the physician it was evident that she had never really forgotten them--although, in the waking state, she was able to recall her childhood only vaguely--but had subconsciously dwelt on them all her life, to the wrecking of her self-confidence, as well as the causing of her troubles of speech. Only by completely blotting them out, through psychotherapeutic means, could her restoration to health be effected.

Similarly, it has been found that emotional disturbances are at the bottom of stammering when it develops, not in childhood, but in adult life. A particularly instructive case, because of the insight it affords into the ingenuity with which the expert psychoanalyst gets at the truth in even the most complicated cases of functional nervous or mental disorder, is one that was successfully handled by Doctor A. A. Brill, already mentioned in these pages, a pupil of the pioneer Austrian psychoanalyst, Doctor Sigmund Freud. Doctor Brill's patient was a man who, after an early life untroubled by speech defect, had begun to stammer from no discernible cause, and had been stammering for a number of years before he consulted the New York specialist. Several weeks of psychoanalysis elicited nothing that would account for his trouble, and Doctor Brill was in much perplexity, until he one day noticed that the words on which his patient chiefly stammered were words beginning with or containing the letter "k." It occurred to him that this letter might have some significant association in the stammerer's mind, but the latter denied that it could have.

However, after psychoanalysis had proceeded further, Doctor Brill learned that there had been an event in the patient's life, though occurring some little time before the development of the stammering, that had made a most painful, even agonising, impression on him. He had been engaged to a young woman who had eloped with his closest friend; and this had so wrought on him that he had vowed never to utter her name again.

"And what was her name?" asked Doctor Brill.

The stammerer stared at him and burst into a violent tirade.

"Haven't I just told you," he cried, "that I have taken an oath never to speak it? What business is it of yours, anyway? What bearing can it have on my trouble of speech?"

"Only this bearing--that it may be the means of curing you. Come, now, I am sorry you have taken an oath, because you will have to break it and tell me the name."

"I'll die first."

With this he seized his hat and dashed out of the doctor's office in a frenzy of indignation. Doctor Brill did not see him again for a month. Then he returned, repentant. He would tell the name, he said, on condition that Doctor Brill did not write it down in the detailed record which, as is customary, he was making of the case. To this a prompt assent was given, and the troublesome name was as promptly made known. As Doctor Brill had expected, it began with K. He then said, leaning forward and showing his sheet of notes:

"See, I have kept my promise. I have called her Miss W. And, now, we'll soon have you quite well."

But on his next visit the patient was in despair. He was, he protested, stammering worse than ever. Words that had never given him any trouble before were now almost unpronounceable by him. On investigation, it turned out that they were, one and all, words in which the letter "w" had a place.

"At last," said Doctor Brill, "we know for a certainty what has made you stammer. It was the foolish oath you took, which served to sustain in your mind the memory of the terrible experience you went through on account of your faithless sweetheart. Vowing never to utter her name, yet thinking constantly of her, you have unconsciously made it difficult for you to utter even words in which the most prominent letter of that name--its initial--occurs. And, now, since she has become Miss W. to you, as well as Miss K., you are stammering on words with "w," as well as words with "k." We must free you from the torment of that vow and of the pent-up emotions that go with the forbidden name, and then you will never stammer more."

To this mode of dealing with stammerers could anything be in stronger contrast than the brutal Dieffenbach technique? The latter exemplifies, if in an extreme form, the folly of attempting--as is so often done, even to-day--to treat stammering on a basis of imperfect observation. The former shows the happy results that may be obtained when it is attacked in the light of thorough investigation. No; it is neither by the surgeon's knife nor by the use of mechanical appliances or physiological devices that stammering is to be really conquered, but by intelligent application of the wonderful remedial measures which modern medical psychology has worked out.

Stammering, to recapitulate, is not at bottom an anatomical or physiological trouble. Its individual peculiarities, varied as they are, all tend to prove that it is a mental malady, symptomatic of a psychoneurosis having its origin in subconscious emotional states. The rôle that heredity plays in it is merely to provide the soil in which it can flourish. Of wholly mental causation, it is curable by mental means, whether by faith in the efficacy of any method of treatment, however intrinsically worthless that method may be; by "suggestions" of a general character; or, if needful, by specific recall and eradication of the "forgotten memories" that underlie it.

Lest, however, I raise hope unduly, I would at once add that not even the most expert practitioners in psychoanalysis, or in any other psychological mode of treating stammering, are justified in guaranteeing an absolute or an "approximate" cure in every case. Experience is showing that the "emotional complexes" responsible for stammering are, in many cases, so deep-seated--and often so entangled in later complexes--that it is virtually impossible to get at them by any present-known method of mind tunnelling. And, in many other cases, the process of psychoanalysis is so slow and tedious that the stammerer is all too likely to lose heart and abandon the effort at cure.

Consequently, in respect to stammering, prevention becomes of more than usual importance. And the prevention of stammering, I trust I have already made amply clear, rests chiefly with parents. It is again primarily a question of guarding the young from needless emotional stresses, of early training to foster in children calmness, courage, self-confidence; so that, when inevitable shocks and trials come, they will have no power to overwhelm the mind and give birth to stammering or any other neurotic evil.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 13: It is important to recognise that certain organic diseases of the central nervous system do sometimes, through destructive action on the lower speech centres, cause incurable speech defect resembling stammering. Thus, a "stammerer" whom I referred to Doctor Coriat was found to be a victim, not of true stammering, but of the effects of a paralysis-causing organic disease experienced in early life. This condition, however, is of infrequent occurrence; and its presence can be readily determined by a neurologist.]

FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP

VIII

FAIRY TALES THAT HANDICAP

"Every ugly thing told to the child, every shock, every fright given him, will remain like minute splinters in the flesh to torture him all his life long."

Thus said the famous Italian scientist, Angelo Mosso, a good many years ago. The facts of more recent research into the psychology and psychopathology of childhood, as reviewed in the preceding chapters, vindicate Professor Mosso's statement to an extent and in ways undreamed of by him. Nor is it only the emotionally disturbing things seen, heard, or experienced by children that may have a decisively adverse influence on their development. Harm may similarly and equally be done by the books and stories they read, even to the extent of provoking or accentuating nervous maladies. Particularly mischievous in this respect, because of their wide reading by children, are certain fairy tales which many parents--nay, I might say, nearly all parents--consider quite suitable for young readers.

You smile incredulously at the suggestion that a fairy tale could possibly affect a child harmfully. Still more preposterous seems to you the idea that the harmful effects of fairy tales--if such harmful effects actually occur--may be carried over into adult life. But, listen:

To the Doctor Brill of the letter "k" stammering case just narrated, there once came a young man of twenty-eight, afflicted with a strange and alarming malady.

"Doctor," he said, "I want your candid opinion as to what is the matter with me. Physically I feel well, but mentally I am badly off. In fact, I fear I am insane, and dangerously so. For a long time I have been tormented by a strange desire to bite and stab people and to torture them in all sorts of ways. I yearn for the times when everybody carried the dirk and dagger and could kill when offended. As yet I have restrained my mad impulse, but I am in terror lest I give way to it. Is there anything you can do to help me?"

The mere fact that he thus clearly recognised and candidly confessed his mental state was in itself a hopeful sign. But Doctor Brill was well aware that it might be extremely difficult to cure him, perhaps impossible. Everything would depend, in the first place, on whether the young man were actually insane or merely the victim of a psychoneurotic obsession. If the latter, there was a possibility of his being cured, provided the subconscious region of his mind could be explored with sufficient thoroughness to get at and root out the ideas underlying and responsible for his dangerous obsession. Satisfying himself that it actually was a case of psychoneurosis, Doctor Brill began the work of mental exploration. And, knowing that submerged ideas are pretty sure to reveal themselves, directly or indirectly, through the character of a person's dreams, he began by directing the young man to make a written record of his dreaming.

"Whenever you have a dream," he told him, "I want you to write it down as soon as you awake, and bring me an account of it."

Before long, Doctor Brill was in possession of a remarkable collection of dreams, many of which, as he had expected, were of an exceedingly unpleasant character. Analysing these dreams, a curious fact at once became evident--namely, that the patient's mental life was largely occupied with imaginings that related, not to the world of everyday existence, but to the people and events of mythology and fairy tale.

Always, too, in his subconscious imaginings, ideas of death and violence were uppermost. During the dream-analysis he recalled with special vividness such themes as the beheading of Medusa, the cruelties of Bluebeard, and the freezing to death of Eva, heroine of Bryant's "Little People of the Snows." Even trivial details in the settings of these and similar fairy tales were remembered and brought out in his dream-associations with a fulness that astonished the patient himself. Dr. Brill comments:

"He was very imaginative, so that the harrowing adventures enacted by fairies, genii, and Greek deities, on which he was constantly fed, were deeply interwoven with his own life, and he built up for himself a strange, archaic world. He liked to be alone, and often wandered away from his companions, to act through, in his own way, the adventures of which he had just heard or read.

"He himself traced the selection of his profession--that of an actor--to these boyish actions when he tried to imitate the fleet-footed Mercury, some character from fairyland or the "Arabian Nights," or some savage Indians. He thus imagined himself flying, and beheading monsters above the clouds, or penetrating to the centre of the earth in the form of some wicked magician, all the time passing through the most harrowing scenes. By a process of condensation, he fused ancient characters and episodes with persons and actions of reality, but his fancies usually began with some god-like or demon-like myth and gradually descended to human beings.

"During the first few weeks of the analysis he was in the habit of merging into a dreamy state while reproducing associations, and often became so excited that the work had to be temporarily interrupted."[14]

It was unnecessary to seek much further for the explanation of the obsession of torture. In large part, at all events, this was quite evidently the expression in consciousness of the gruesome images with which the patient's mind had been filled by the tales told him in his childhood. Though faded from conscious remembrance, they had remained with him subconsciously, to influence for evil the current of his conscious thoughts. Or, to put the matter tersely: Had tales of cruelty and violent death not been told him in his early days, he might never have been afflicted in manhood with his morbid longings to inflict pain.

Of course, if this case stood by itself it would be of no great significance. But the fact is that during the past few years--or since physicians began to appreciate the part played by childhood impressions in causing mental and nervous disease--evidence has been accumulating to indicate that the almost universal custom of telling fairy tales to children does entail grave risks to their character and their health. The child of normal nervous constitution is likely to be affected only in character; the supersensitive, neurotic child may be hurried, by the tales he hears or reads, into some more or less serious mental or nervous malady.

Let me hasten to add that this does not mean that the fairy tale should be entirely banished from the literature of childhood. It means only that parents should exercise more discrimination than they usually show in selecting fairy tales for their children. The rightly chosen fairy tale is indeed an almost indispensable aid in the early education of children, for reasons that are admirably summarised by an American educator, Mr. Percival Chubb, in these words:

"One value in fairy stories for the young is that they embody and commemorate the man-child's first rude assertion of the lordship of mind, and subserve the development of a later sense of spiritual freedom and autonomy. Another is that they are expressive, as all art is expressive, of the idealistic hunger at the heart of men. Again, as forms of art, they select and co-ordinate those facts which bring out the spiritual meanings of life. That is, they release from the unsifted materials of experience the imprisoned 'Soul of Fact.' And not only do they embody the basic moral insights and interpretations of childish man, but they express the simple and larger emotions, and so feed the heart of the child. They quicken, too, the imagination--that master-faculty without which the sympathy which is man's highest and richest endowment fails of fruition. They are an aid to culture by giving an outlook upon all nations and kindreds, all countries and conditions of life. Finally, along with their allied forms of literary invention, the myth, saga, fable, and so on, they are a condition to understanding the innumerable allusions with which the literature of the world is studded."[15]

All this is assuredly the function of the fairy tale, but frequently it is frustrated by the kind of fairy tales children are allowed to read. For one thing, the imaginative faculty is scarcely stimulated in a healthy fashion when the mind is led to dwell constantly, as in the case of Doctor Brill's patient, on thoughts of cruelty and pain. Nor can the fairy tale be said to have exerted a healthy influence in such a case as that represented by a little girl who was brought for treatment to another medical psychologist, and whose morbid irritability, disobedience, and crying spells were, by psychological analysis, traced to an excessive jealousy of her brother. In the course of the analysis the discovery was made that the girl had frequent dreams of seeing both her mother and her brother cruelly treated. In one dream, witches shut her mother in a cave to starve to death, and threw her brother into a large caldron of boiling water, leaving her to perish miserably.