A Developmental Crisis Theory of Stuttering

The relationship between mother and child has been considered as the interpersonal matrix within which the development of language in children occurs. Processes of successful language learning and of developmental deviations have been analyzed within this framework. Stuttering has been interpreted as the result of a crisis in language learning coincident with a crisis in the relationship between mother and child. The general hypothesis is that a disruption of reciprocal identification between mother and child, occurring at the time when the child is in the practising stage of early grammatical speech, results in the child's inability to master language learning, expressed in a regression to earlier forms of language behaviour. An experimental study was designed to test four operational hypotheses derived from the theory. This study has implications for research in symbolic learning occurring within an interpersonal matrix, and also for therapy with stuttering children and their mothers.