The weak and vacillating will now manifests itself as a dominant, masterful power-of-will and the stagnant mentality of the stammerer has now given place to a vigorous, forceful, creative mental power.  The mind-wandering or lack of ability to concentrate is gone and in its place is an intense and well controlled power-of-concentration.  In addition to this, the nervousness which marked the every movement of the stammerer has disappeared and the self-consciousness which made life a misery is replaced by a calm self-control, resulting in an entire self-forgetfulness, perfect poise and a feeling of self-possession.

These benefits accrue gradually as the course progresses, but when, upon the completion of the course, perfect speech is finally restored, the results are fully evident and entirely permanent.  Their permanency is the crowning result of the proper methods—­ methods which eradicate the trouble at its source—­treat and remove the cause instead of treating the effect.

CHAPTER VIII

SOME CASES I HAVE MET

During the last twenty-eight years, I have personally met more than 22,000 stammerers, diagnosed 97,000 cases by mail and corresponded with more than 210,000 people who stammer or stutter.  In this time, it is only natural that I should have come in contact with almost every conceivable type of stammering in practically every form.

I am going to describe a few of these cases in this chapter, give their history and description very briefly, follow out the course of the trouble when unchecked and indicate the circumstances of cure when the stammerer has placed himself for treatment.

I shall make no attempt to discuss all types of speech disorders nor even all of the forms of any one type, but rather to take up those cases which can be regarded as most common and which are typical of the disorders of the largest number of stammerers and stutterers.  Since a whole volume could easily be filled with descriptions of cases, it is evident that those discussed here must be but briefly described.

(The case numbers in the following pages refer to specific cases, but not to the order of their treatment, since the classification is a decimal system used to indicate type, duration, stage, etc.)

Case No. 65.435—­This was a boy of 8, brought to me by his mother after he had experienced untold trouble in school.  The boy complained of a pain in his head when making an effort to talk or after having spoken under the strain for some minutes.  I found the spasmodic contractions accompanying his trouble to be very pronounced for a boy so young in years and upon making the examination, was not surprised to find his to be a case of Combined Stammering and Stuttering.  There was no indication of Thought-Lapse, but there was a condition that could easily have been mistaken for it—­viz.:  a woeful lack of confidence in his own ability to speak, which in