Although the study of thought processes is sometimes considered to be the province of psychologists, the realm of internal dialogue can legitimately be studied as intrapersonal communication. Second thoughts, also termed self-talk or dissonance, can be discovered and examined in speech drafts, monologic letters, and diaries. For example, the patterns of revision and occasional return to earlier phrasing are partially revealed in five handwritten versions of the Gettysburg Address, as Abraham Lincoln continued to rethink his words three to four months after delivering his speech. Another example of second thoughts are John Cheever's letters, recovered and published by his son, that reveal a dissonance which contrasts with the decisive voice in his completed fiction. Cheever's letters show, among other recurring patterns, his attempts to define his personal identity and refine the images he later used in his stories. Also representative of inner speech is the diary of 18-year old Colin Perry who recorded his thoughts about the Battle of Britain, but who also revealed his preoccupations, ambivalence, and self-doubt. These resources illustrate an aspect of intrapersonal communication in which the mind comes back again and again to an earlier thought, sometimes contradicting or reconsidering, but often reaching a higher level of insight and refinement. (Eighteen references are attached.) (KEH)