The Essential Role of Language in the Recovery Process

Gary Collier, PhD

"Human beings are the only creatures on earth that can talk themselves into trouble." This statement, from a book on communication theory, reflected the perspective which I hoped, in my original paper, to bring to Abraham Low's original work on language and Recovery.

I hoped to be able to make a contribution from the standpoint of communication studies (1) by showing how Low's ideas fit into the context of other twentieth-century thinking about the relation between language and human behavior, and (2) by showing the central importance of these ideas in the very practical and useful system of self-help mental health that Low developed to complement the efforts of the mental health professional.

The first of these tasks involved little effort to discover how much Low's work both reflected and anticipated modern thinking on the subject. During the 1930's and 40's, as Low's biographers have pointed out, he may have found himself at odds with a psychiatric establishment dominated by the then-popular model of Freudian psychoanalysis, but in terms of his focus on the role of language, Low was very much in-the mainstream of intellectual currents of his time.

Low's noteworthy contribution came in evolving this mainstream approach to language into a practical system of self-help techniques. He never denied (and in fact he anticipated) that mental health and emotional problems might have a multitude of causes (biochemical not least of all), but he was certain that if people "created their reality" through the language they used, then the language used by his patients had to be an integral part of both the problems they faced and the solution to those problems. Dysfunctional language created for the patient a "world" of illness, and only by replacing this language with a healthier one could the patient learn to live in a healthier society.

While there are many nuances to Low's ideas about the problems of language, his two most important concepts are "the symptomatic idiom" and "temper".  The symptomatic idiom, he says, boils down to one word- danger! The patient's every symptom, every reaction, every behavior becomes labeled and symbolized as a threatening sign:
"The patient considers the violent palpitations as presaging sudden death. The pressure in the head is viewed as due to a brain tumor. The tenseness is experienced as so "terrific" that the patient fears he is going to "burst". His fatigue does not let up "one single minute", and "how long can the body stand it?" (Low, 1950, pp.21-22.)

The concept of "temper" refers to the mental and linguistic habit of interpreting life in terms of judgments of right and wrong-angry temper if these judgments are directed towards others, fearful temper if they are directed towards oneself. While such judgments may be appropriate in rare circumstances, Low emphasizes that his patients far too often are in the habit of allying them to the trivialities of everyday life-with the result that such judgmental language habits interact with the symptomatic idiom to create a corrosive anger and fear, destructive of a sense of security and mental health.

If language use is an essential part of the problem which patients face, then it follows that attention to language must be part of the solution. It was from this insight that Low developed the approach that has become central to the Recovery method - the "Recovery language". Over a considerable period of time, Low, with the help of his patients, developed ways to undercut unhealthy linguistic practices by substituting for them a language which has built into it an emphasis upon safety and security. This new language is incorporated into what, in Recovery, are called "spotting" techniques-basically verbal formulas or slogans, easy to say and easy to remember, by which the patient's linguistic and cognitive relearning is facilitated. Examples of such "spots" are "helplessness is not hopelessness," "symptoms are distressing but not dangerous," "excuse rather than accuse," "every act of self-control builds a measure of self-esteem," and many, many, many more-all directed consistently towards the reduction of temper and the removal of the symptomatic idiom.

While such phrases, at first glance, may seem simple or even trite, their very simplicity makes them easy to learn, to remember, and, most importantly, to apply in times of stress. Almost sixty years of successful use of these spots by thousands of patients testifies to the value of this approach to language which Low developed. Today, both patients and mental health professionals continue to find "the Recovery language" helpful in preventing relapses and breakdowns.

Just learning a few catch phrases and reading a few of Low's works is not enough, of course. Development of secure language habits takes time and practice. The group procedures of the Recovery meetings facilitate learning, however. Through association with others who share their problems, new persons at Recovery meetings find it easier to absorb the "new language"-and thus, over time, to develop an altered approach to life itself. It was observation of this altered approach in so many people over so long a period of time that led me to the conclusion of my 1991 paper, a conclusion that I still hold today:

Low's views are part of a larger twentieth-century concern with how we use and are used by our language in constructing the "reality" in which we live. In this sense, through the method of Recovery, Low has helped his patients to live in a reality of hope rather than a reality of fear and despair. In this sense, by changing the language used by his patients, his gift to them has been not just language but a way of living, not just words but a world.