ABSTRACT
Lines and phrases from literature also float into my mind as I listen to the patients: 'All happy families are alike: but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way' - that one comes up a lot. An angry man, incoherently vowing vengeance, conjures up: Ί shall do such things, I know not yet what they be, but they shall be as the terrors of the earth' (from King Lear). Someone expressing anguished regret makes me think: 'agenbite of inwit' (James Joyce's wonderful borrowed but freshly applied phrase for the gnawing of conscience). And, when an amiable old fellow launches himself on an apparently pointless digression (as they frequently do), I remember Tristram Shandy declaring that 'digressions are incontestably the sunshine'. That always helps me to sit back and listen and not worry about the diagnosis, which will come at its own appointed time.
