Glauber reviews the different hypotheses concerning stuttering: as a pregenital conversion, as part of a psychoneurosis, as an organ neurosis, and as an ego affliction. His genetic hypothesis relates to the anxiety of the disruption of the mother-child symbiosis. Using Federn's concepts of ego structure, ego cathexis, and ego anxiety, the author proposes that stuttering is an impairment of an ego apparatus, speech functioning. This is due to too much or too little investment of psychic energy.