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Yet, in spite of this, intensive study of the taped interviews by teams of psychotherapists and linguists laid bare the surprising fact that, in the first five minutes of an initial interview, the patient often reveals as many as a dozen times just what's wrong with him ; ;

to spot these giveaways the therapist must know either intuitively or scientifically how to listen.

Naturally, the patient does not say, `` I hate my father '', or `` Sibling rivalry is what bugs me ''.

What he does do is give himself away by communicating information over and above the words involved.

Some of the classic indicators, as described by Drs. Pittenger, Hockett, and Danehy in The First Five Minutes, are these: ambiguity of pronouns:

Stammering or repetition of I, you, he, she, et cetera may signal ambiguity or uncertainty.

On the other hand significant facts may be concealed -- she may mean I or everybody, as it did with the tense and irritable woman mentioned before, may refer to a specific person.

The word that is not used can be as important as the word that is used ; ;

therapist and/or linguist must always consider the alternatives.

When someone says, for example, `` They took x-rays to see that there was nothing wrong with me '', it pays to consider how this statement would normally be made.

( This patient, in actuality, was a neurasthenic who had almost come to the point of accepting the fact that it was not her soma but her psyche that was the cause of her difficulty.

) Amateur linguists note here that Pursewarden, in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, stammered when he spoke of his wife, which is hardly surprising in view of their disastrous relationship.