[Pedagogy of inspiration].

We often hear that the wisest about vocal reeducation and more specifically about the problem of phonatory breathing is to focus only on the exhale, leaving the inhale automatic and involontary. This carefull approach is explained by the fact that the air-intake is a normally automatic and inconscious gesture in the speech which risks indeed to become unnatural if voluntarily controlled. A training that would preserve the natural nature of the gesture thanks to the practice of relaxation, permits however to avoid this difficulty and to lead to a better rehabilitation of the phonatory behaviour.

[Echo reading and stuttering].

Echo-reading is a practical therapeutic tool which has been proposed for use in stuttering, most especially when the functions of rhythm and association are disrupted in stuttered speech. After a period of preparation in which the mechanical work involved in speech is integrated, it is proposed that there should follow a period of listening and association, which serves to re-establish the spoken word with its meaning and expressivity. The subject undergoes rehabilitation in a living language which is correlated with the imagination, and with that Other quality which always forms a part of speech.

[Is stuttering a functional dystonia?].

For some years the dystonias have been the subject of major studies and, as far as the generalised dystonias are concerned, of major therapeutic advances. The opposite is true of the so-called focal or functional dystonias, which include conditions such as Meige's syndrome, spasmodic torticollis, writer's cramp, dystonias using instruments especially in musicians, and spasmodic dysphonia. For the last group, the term functional dysphonia would seems to us to be more appropriate.