title: His mother-tongue: from stuttering to separation, a case history.
abstract: This paper delineates the transference and countertransference experiences in the analysis of a patient whose presenting symptom and main concern was his stutter. I suggest that oral-sadistic rather than anal-sadistic hostile elements may be identified in this patient's particular stutter. I focus on its significance in terms of object relationship: my patient's struggle to 'get born', to emerge as a separate other. I argue that early symbiotic fusion needs in conflict with the need to separate produce his stutter. Speech and language are seen as the vehicle for separation and the stutter as a flight from separateness back to an illusion of fusion with mother.
authors: M
authors: M
authors: Wilkinson
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001010:Anxiety, Separation / Q000523:psychology*; D003379:Countertransference; D004325:Dreams / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009769:Object Attachment; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D013342:Stuttering / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*