ABSTRACT
The patient I will call Babette is a European woman of Jewish Moroccan ancestry whom I saw for the first time when she was 20 years old. The middle child and older daughter of a Jewish family where all five members had different countries of birth, she obtained “permission” from the family to consult me, because they worried about her stammering, a symptom present since early childhood. She regarded this concern of her parents with a mixture of resentment and humor, pointing out that since this was a “visible” symptom, they had agreed to therapy, while ignoring all she knew was emotionally wrong with her.
