ABSTRACT
Language is the medium with which we express both the self we believe we are, and the self that others around us perceive us to be and react to, that may be quite discrepant. The concept of two distinctive mental processes which use language that has identical superficial characteristics for different semantic purposes is introduced. While it is evident that people from different countries and different parts of the world speak different formal languages, what is not so apparent is that there is a deeper qualitative language difference at the core of each of us, regardless of country of origin or residence. We each, and in varying individual proportions, “speak” two languages: a “mother tongue” that I call primordial consciousness, and a later developing “second language” of reflective representational thought. The sense of self associated with the mother tongue of primordial consciousness develops out of the undifferentiated matrix of the earliest efforts mothers and their infants make to attach to one another. As a consequence of the vicissitudes of early attachment and individual variations in the use of the two languages of primordial consciousness and reflective representational thought, each person’s resultant melding of language and its uses is unique. When the primary attachment process is disturbed the language of primordial consciousness may persist in situations where the language of reflective representational thought is socially appropriate and assumed, and the result is language aberration. To illustrate some of the aberrant ways language can be utilized brief examples are given from persons with psychotic personality organization. In most of these examples the pathology and aberrant language use is not readily apparent.
