ABSTRACT
The term Aphasia is reserved for those kinds of speech-disintegration which are based on the dissolution of well-developed verbal symbolisation. Mutism on the other hand, should be used only in cases which have not developed speech at all. In Hearing-Mutism the child’s hearing is normal; but the auditory sense-data are not utilised. Thus his ‘world’ consists of all sense-data except the acoustic ones. The symptoms of the sensory type of Hearing-Mutism are similar to those in Aphasia. The patients do not attend to speech; it does not exist for them. In addition they are mute. In some cases utterances are restricted to random inarticulate sounds. As in Motor Aphasia speechlessness is the conspicuous symptom in the motor type of Hearing-Mutism, while understanding of spoken words seems at first sight to be unaffected. Various factors, such as retarded development of the speech of the parents, hereditary neuropathic traits, adenoids, alcoholism of the parents, intermarriages, play their part in bringing about Hearing-Mutism.
