Back of that statement, there is a very sound scientific reason that explains why stammering cannot be outgrown.  Stammering is destructive.  It tears down but cannot build up.  Every time the stammerer attempts to speak and fails, the failure tears out a certain amount of his power-of-will.  And since it is impossible for him to speak fluently except on rare occasions, this loss of will-power and confidence takes place every time he attempts to speak, so that with each successive failure, his power to speak correctly becomes steadily lessened.  The case of a stammerer might be compared to a road in which a deep rut has been worn.  Each time a wagon passes through this rut, it becomes deeper.  The stammerer has no more chance of outgrowing his trouble than the road has of outgrowing the rut.

Dr. Alexander Melville Bell recognizes the absolute certainty of the progress of stammering and the impossibility of outgrowing the difficulty, when he states in his work, principles of speech (page 234): 

“If the stammerer or stutterer were brought under treatment before the spasmodic habit became established, his cure would be much easier than after the malady has become rooted in his muscular and nervous system.”

To the stammerer or stutterer or the parents of a stammering child, experience brings no truer lesson than this:  Stammering cannot be outgrown; danger lurks behind delay.

CHAPTER VII

THE EFFECT ON THE MIND

It is hardly necessary to describe to the stammerer who has passed beyond the first stage of his trouble the effect of stammering on the mind.  Most any sufferer in the second or third stages of the malady has experienced for very brief periods the sensation of thoughts slipping away from him and of pursuing or attempting to pursue those thoughts for some seconds without success, finally to find them returning like a flash.

The stammerer who recalls such an incident will remember the feelings of lassitude or momentary physical exhaustion, as well as the feeling of weakness which followed the lapse-of-thought.  This mental flurry is but an indication of a mental condition known as Thought-Lapse, which may result from long-continued stammering, especially a case which has been allowed to progress into the Chronic or Advanced Stage.

A case of aphasia:  One writer, in citing instances of thought-lapse, or aphasia, tells of the case of a man unable to recall the name of any object until it was repeated for him.  A knife, for instance, placed on the table before him, brought no mental image of the word representing the object, yet if the word “knife” were spoken for him, he would immediately say, “Oh, yes, it is a knife.”

A chapter could be filled with instances of this sort, but I shall not attempt to quote further any of the symptoms of aphasia in a stammerer, for in cases that become so far advanced, there is considerable question as to the possibility of bringing about a cure.  I say this, notwithstanding the fact that my experience with students having this tendency has been very satisfactory indeed.