THE NICEST THING TO SAY about Dr. Shands' paper is that it is "provocative." He makes two points: 1) that what differentiates mental "health" from mental "illness" is essentially the consensus of a group making this distinction; 2) that in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness more attention must be paid to the nature and function of human language than has generally been done heretofore.

More specifically, after examining the language of his so-called "mentally ill" patient and finding it woven out of strands that