The Neurology of Psychotic Speech

Abstract

Speech has been called a socio-economic device for saving effort in the attainment of objectives (Whitehorn and Zipf, 1943). One of its earliest and most fundamental purposes is to orientate the individual within the community. This socializing effect operates early in childhood, and in a phylogenetic sense it was perhaps one of the greatest factors in the origin of speech in primitive man. As maturity is slowly achieved in the individual as in the genus, the use of language becomes inextricably interwoven within the warp and woof of the organism, as exemplified not only by thinking processes, but also by the complicated structure of personality. The development of speech during the pre-hominoid stage synchronizes with the gradual elaboration of communal life: with cries and calls serving as a “sound-tool”: and with the beginnings of delegation of labour. Thus language is primarily a vocal actualization of the tendency to see reality symbolically (Sapir). The same is true ontogenetically. As the child gradually acquires speech, the organization of his thinking slowly changes; it evolves by intricate steps from ego-centric to socialized activity; and as he begins more and more to employ pronouns of the second and third person, he also utters fewer “action words”. We readily agree with Fillmore Sanford (1942) that “there are many indications that language is a vehicle of personality as well as of thought, for when a person speaks, he tells us not only about the world, but also, through both form and content, about himself”. The same author quoted Ben Jonson: “Language most showeth a man; speak that I may see thee.”