Stuttering from the Anus

Abstract

This piece of writing is intended as a plea to people who stutter to embrace psychoanalytic theories of stuttering that relate dysfluent speech to unresolved neuroses stemming from the anal stage of human development. Premising its ideas on early psychoanalytic work by Sigmund Freud and Otto Fenichel, among others, this essay argues that there is much to be gained from pathologizing dysfluent speech as a product of unresolved narcissistic aggression. Rather than articulate a psychoanalytic cure for such aggression, this work of creative scholarly labour suggests that analogies comparing dysfluent speech to excrement have the potential to emancipate stuttering from the limited confines of the person who stutter’s mouth.