ABSTRACT
Where traditional linguistics concerned itself with the study of la langue and its underlying principles, the new schools of psycholinguistics are moving gradually toward the study of la parole and a focus on natural language. Continuously engaged in one form of natural language study is the psychotherapist. Decoding, parsing and otherwise responding to spontaneous utterances is his stock in trade, and in the service of understanding everything possible about the patient, the therapist becomes an expert on one person’s language — his patient’s. Some of the forms of this language are not intelligible; others convey several sets of meanings; and yet others are more implicit than explicit. The therapist, in order to capture all possible meanings, learns to listen on different levels and develops an almost poetic sensitivity to form and content, to metaphor and simile. This sensitivity can be carefully taught (see Sharpe, 1950, for some good examples; Sharpe was formerly a student of literature); more often, it is learned in passing, as an outgrowth of the therapist’s experience.
