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In the introduction to this book, Dr. Halls Dally briefly states the main problem: "Speech constitutes the chief vent for the emotions. Under ordinary conditions its function is automatic, but the mechanisms concerned in it are so delicate that very slight disturbance of them is sufficient to upset the balance, and so to impair or destroy the whole beauty and precision of the process of utterance. In the case of stammering it becomes necessary to go deeply into the reasons which lead to such disturbances, when it is nearly always found that a deep-seated sense of fear is present as the underlying causal factor. The fear sense disorganizes speech processes, and although, as every sufferer is aware, certain conditions may augment or lessen this dread, nevertheless the basis of the malady is primarily psychical and only secondarily physical." He adds that the "speech center" has been rendered sensitive by heredity