“…That linguistic phenomena such as these are very responsive to anxiety states, with or without psychotherapy, has been convincingly demonstrated for several decades by Mahl (1959Mahl ( 1987, and several other researchers have contributed to establishing that relationship (Balkan & Masserman 1940, Cook 1969, Lalljee & Cook 1975, Siegman & Pope 1972, although there have also been failures to support Mahl's findings (Benton, Hartman, & Sarason 1955, Boomer & Goodrich 1961. The relationship between language and anxiety may be considered an instance of a more general relationship between language and regression, where anxiety may be an instigator of regression, a component of it, or a consequence of it.…”