A PSYCHIATRIC WORD CLINIC Session IV-Words Describing Withdrawal or Indifference
Abstract
And in the beginning is the Word. For with the first contact the examiner must paint in words his picture of the patient.
"Words well chosen," said Joseph Addison, "have so great a force that a description often gives more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves."
You do not find the precise word by dipping into a grab bag and pulling out the first item. You select the accurate terms with discriminating care from the dictionary's wonderful warehouse of words. You fit them neatly together to balance and enrich one another, as a painter works from his palette. This takes time and trouble, but of all your works and thoughts only the words you write will live forever.
The examiner's words—your words—are frozen on paper and stored in a cabinet. A year or ten years hence the words are still there to make you ashamed of slovenly words—or to do you proud.
For in the end, too, there is the Word.
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