Comparatively unstructured discussions between parents and their disturbed adolescent children concerning important problems between them were analyzed. Each complete statement made by a sender to a receiver was considered separately as response to a prior statement and as stimulus for a subsequent response. When the families were divided into subgroups according to the adolescent's manifest style of problem expression, consistent relationships were found between type of behavior disturbance of the child and specific attributes of the parental verbal behavior. The findings, thus, provide empirical evidence that differential patterns of intrafamilial communication contribute to the development of particular forms of adolescent behavior disturbance.