[The exercise factor in the treatment of stutterers (author's transl)]

Speech techniques can always become automatic with exercises provided the only purpose is the initiation and formation of particular habitual speech-motor patterns such as the coordination of respiration and phonation. However, if the speech-technical measures alienate the stutterer's spontaneous speech, exercises designed to automate speech flow seem bound to fail, since the stutterer cannot fully identify himself with a manner of speech which is not the expression of himself. The anxiety inherent in some speech situations should be allayed by the speaker's accustomization to the adverse stimuli they produce. However, in the final analysis, the irrationality of speech situations defies a systematic approach. Thus, it is the relaxation method connected with the process of graded desensitization of the stutterer which is therapeutically effective and not his adaptation to particular speech situations.