30 Psychobabble Phrases - Which Do You Hate Most?
Perhaps it's time to 'get really OCD' about cleaning the fridge?
Have a read and then vote below so we can crown our most hated piece of psychobabble!
1. "My pet peeve is the use of OCD in, I get really OCD about cleaning my kitchen. What's really offensive about the usage is that it suggests one can spontaneously develop and un-develop a disorder. This is offensive to people who actually live with mental illness daily. Unless it's interfering with your functioning, it's not a disorder."
Erika
2. "Using fetish to mean 'a fascination with' rather than its true meaning (causing sexual arousal)."
Whistler
3. "Hands down, my biggest peeve is: reptilian brain. I heard two doctors on Oprah talk endlessly about how past life regression therapy works (!) because it bypasses your 'normal functioning brain' and goes straight for the 'reptilian brain', garnering knowing nods from the studio audience. I nearly chucked a shoe at my TV set."
Allison
4. "Every time I hear someone misuse the term acting out, I begin experiencing homicidal ideation. Of course 'acting out' is a psychoanalytic term denoting the enactment of an internal dynamic in the external world. You can't recognize the internal feeling states and so it is necessary to 'act it out.' But even among fully trained, licensed clinical psychologists this term has come to mean 'behaving badly' -- which of course makes it a useless term."
David Godot
5. "Unfortunately, retard has become a word of choice as far as insults go. The words moron, cretin and idiot began as medical terms that got absorbed into common use over time."
Romeo Vitelli
6. "I'm not a drug addict, I've been self-medicating."
Ron Frederickson
7. "Talk it out or talk it through. I understand why the therapist wants one to endlessly relive the moment, the rape, the abuse, the arguments with mommy, but I fail to see how the constant repetition does much of anything but reinforce it. Repressed feelings, if there is such a thing, don't automatically turn into mental bogeymen. In other places, it's called forgetting."
Troy Sumrall
8. "My favorites: He's totally projecting. She's definitely OCD/NPD/some other diagnosis."
Sara
9. "I'm stuck at denial (without a paddle, ha ha). A reference to Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' 'five stages of grief' which are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance. Dr. Kubler-Ross never suggested one stage had to be completed before the next and there's little evidence for these stages anyway."
Me
10. "Since I am not a native English speaker I didn't come across someone calling me anal until I started to study in England. At first I was shocked, since I didn't immediately understand my friend was not referring to my anus, but to my personality. I don't think many people realize that they are referring to one of the personality traits emerging from the failure to successfully complete one of Freud's developmental stages."
Anon
11. "Indigo Children. Bah. Humbug."
the mad LOLscientist
12. "Two terms that I think are way over used and misapplied are introvert and extrovert. Contrary to what people seem to believe, you're not one or the other, and the huge lists of attributes that get attached to each term are by no means accurate for everyone."
Stu
13. "When people claim they are bipolar when they're really just moody. Saying you're bipolar abdicates all responsibility for the control of your emotions."
bigstevec
14. "Their brains lit up in the scanner. Parts of the brain are said to 'light up' when we remember, lie, do our taxes and, probably, go to the toilet. Surely everyone knows this is just short-hand for increased blood-flow in a certain part of the brain? Do they hell.
Me
15. "In every mental health job I have worked, the real pain in the ass clients are referred to as borderline. Borderline has now ceased to be a disorder; it's psychobabble for 'this client is so annoying and needy I would gladly chew off my own foot to escape'."
Danny
16. "What annoys me most is conversational psychoanalysing - when someone you know (outside of a therapeutic context) frequently tells you that you don't really mean what you're saying, that you're in denial about your true feelings or ignoring what is going on at a subconscious level. Particularly annoying is when they then go on to tell you what you're really feeling!"
Lirone
17. "The most irritating one is the word schizophrenia which is wrongly used whenever someone refer to split personalities. I just can't hold myself back from being a besserwisser and telling them that they have no idea what schizophrenia is."
Violette
18. "Being addicted to...anything. If you do something more than twice a week it's an addiction: from sex, to video games to the internet. Are you a marketer with something to promote? Just use the word addiction and watch those headlines flood in."
Me
19. "When people describe themselves or others as being Type A, when in fact they're nothing like what Type A is supposed to be. Never mind the ridiculous dichotomy of dividing all human beings into 'having these collection of traits' and 'not having these collection of traits'."
Ruaidhri
20-22. "One of the richest sources of psychobabble is educational psychology, particularly in the area of giftedness. So we have every child is gifted. My favorite is the reduction of Dabrowski's overexcitabilities (in themselves a bit dubious) to OEs, as in 'I know I'm gifted because I'm an OE.' And we mustn't forget Gardner's 'intelligences,' which fertilized the ground for the creation of emotional intelligence."
Catana
23. "One of my most hated expressions is retail therapy."
Gary Brandon
24. "People don't talk about their emotions anymore, they vent. Contrary to the psychobabble, though, people are not like steam engines."
Me
25-26. "Here are two glorious examples of psychobabble from the world of business... socialize, as in, 'let's socialize that idea around the group and get some feedback' (translation: let's let people know what our idea is and see if they like it), and institutionalize, as in, 'once we've socialized our strategy and have gotten buy-in from our sponsors, let's make sure it gets institutionalized throughout the organization'."
Anon
27-28. "After a traumatic event (say, the VA Tech shootings) 'grief counselors' parachute in to help the survivors/witnesses get closure and move on. My father died over 20 years ago; I still don't have 'closure', though I stopped grieving after what apparently was an appropriate interval. His absence is an ongoing part of my life that I don't think will 'close'."
Gregory Luce
29. "When people confuse psychologists with psychiatrists. The general public seems to have a very rudimentary understanding of two very different professions."
kelligirly
30. "Hardwired is surely one of the most abused terms in both science journalism and everyday language. According to even usually quite reliable sources, we're 'hardwired' for money, risky behaviour, religion, feeling others' pain, art, fraud, oh, and liking pink, if you're a girl of course."
Vaughan at MindHacks
Now vote for the psychobabble that annoys you the most!
[Image credit: Erik]
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14 comments
fetish
noun
1. an object regarded with awe as being the embodiment or habitation of a potent spirit or as having magical potency.
2. any object, idea, etc., eliciting unquestioning reverence, respect, or devotion: to make a fetish of high grades.
3. Psychology. any object or nongenital part of the body that causes a habitual erotic response or fixation.
Hmm... really? I tend to find the evolution of language to be quite fascinating. I can see where a person claiming to be bipolar when they're just moody is annoying, as is the incorrect use of schizophrenia (thanks Hollywood!). But really, those are cases of blatant misrepresentation, attention seeking, or just plain incorrect. But come on now... fetish? introvert/extrovert? VENT!? How can using these words possibly be of annoyance - they've been absorbed by common language for so long only a seriously anal type A personality would hate them! A pint of beer and some conversational psychoanalyzing (or as I prefer, armchair psychology) would probably highlight where some of these retards have a hardwired reaction causing an increased blood-flow to a certain part of their brain. Seriously, talk it out, get some closure, move on, and for gosh sakes, stop acting out on such trivial points. Sorry, didn't mean to go all bi-polar on you there, I need some retail therapy... going to Starbucks to self-medicate. Oh, and if you're wondering if I used all the terms from the post, I didn't... I don't get all OCD on things like that.
;)
I find #s 1, 5, 10, 13, and 18 to be offensive.
I personally find #1 very offensive because I actually have OCD, and it is NO laughing matter..
Doug Kyle: You're my hero for the day! :D
As for the list, I think I'm going to go with the "confusing psychologists with psychiatrists". I'm tired of explaining to people why my psychOLOGIST isn't the same person that is prescribing me my medicine..
Aquatic,
In my defense, this is the definition from the OED
1. a. Originally, any of the objects used by the Negroes of the Guinea coast and the neighbouring regions as amulets or means of enchantment, or regarded by them with superstitious dread. b. By writers on anthropology (following C. de Brosses, Le Culte des Dieux Fétiches, 1760) used in wider sense: An inanimate object worshipped by primitive peoples on account of its supposed inherent magical powers, or as being animated by a spirit.
c. fig. Something irrationally reverenced.
d. Psychol. An object, a non-sexual part of the body, or a particular action which abnormally serves as the stimulus to, or the end in itself of, sexual desire.
(The 2-3rd definitions were obsolete, and the 4th just mentions that fetish can be combined with other words.)
Granted, there is the definition c. (something irrationally reverenced), which would fall under common usage, but it still conjures up unpleasant possibilities to the psychology student when used in common speech. So, technically, it's not incorrect to say "I have a fetish for high grades" to mean that you attribute a disproportionate amount of value on high grades, but given its other meaning, how is one to prevent some kind of gross misunderstanding? Common sense!?
It seems that some of these are overlapping. Telling someone, "You're just projecting," or, "You're so anal (retentive)," are specific forms of conversational psychoanalysing, no?
I love your article.
As a psychotherapist I find that you are on target with the misuse of these phrases.
I find that people also use the phrase, "She's schizoid!" also.
Another one is when a skinny girl passes by, I hear some say, "She's anorexic."
No offense, even the word "Psychobabble" is greatly misused.
Thanks for the laughs.
Samuel Lopez De Victoria, Ph.D.
http://www.DrSam.tv
While I do believe that the terms "OCD" and "Addiction" are over used / misused, I also believe the terms have wider meanings.
You CAN be addicted to sex, chocolate, video games, etc. These are called "process" addictions and have many of the same roots, causes, symptoms as "substance" addictions. Sex addicts really cannot control their acting out (another misnomer perhaps, but it is the term SAA has selected) any more than an alcoholic cannot control their drinking.
Also, while OCD is very horrible, I do believe that other mental illnesses sometimes present with minor symptoms of OCD. For example, during manic stages of my bipolar, I very much feel the compulsion part of OCD.
As far as offensive goes, I find it offensive to not acknowledge that people can be addicted to things other than drugs or alcohol.
A couple of others:
1) The use of the word "psychotic" to describe violence (another "Thanks Hollywood!" moment). At best, they are confusing psychotic with psychopathic.
2) Someone who doesn't want to go out and party is "being antisocial." No, that's being asocial. Antisocial people party too much, then go out break stuff...
fontalonz,
Of course obsessive compulsive symptoms can manifest in other disorders. My mother's family has a fairly broad range of OC-spectrum disorders--from obsessive compulsive disorder proper to eating disorders to obsessive compulsive personality disorder. Yet, none of these people "gets really OCD" about anything. They have mental disorders and respect the usage of these terms.
The people I hear this usage from are people without psychiatric illness who are particularly fastidious or zealous in some aspect of their lives--more than they consider normal but hardly approaching the clinical range. Jeremy very rightly trimmed my diatribe, but I think the conclusion of it might clarify the context in which the usage is annoying:
"Further, such usages dilute the meanings of words. Obsessive compulsive disorder is not fastidiousness, not diligence. We already have perfectly good words for these concepts, and replacing these words with psychobabble doesn't make anyone sound smarter."
This can even be a problem for some mental health professionals who may not understand giftedness well enough, and presume people have ADHD, OCD and other disorders, when they really do not. See James Webb, PhD article Mis-Diagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children.
I only found this post this evening ... but must add two bits of balderdash that drive me bonkers (or is that...psychotic?! ;-D )
1. "It's all in your mind."
2. Affirmations like "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better!"
Oh! Another one -- It seems, that when a therapist and a client are in some kind of conflict or disagreement (especially if the therapist is pontificating on some esoteric psychobabble) ... if there's any strong emotion being expressed by the client towards the therapist, s/he's told that s/he's in a state of "transference."
Argh!
Teriffic post - I genuinely hope there is a part 2, 3 and 4 to this topic. As someone diagnosed with OCD, I don't get so annoyed when people misuse the term, as I think it's just a case of them not understanding the science, they may not even know it's a condition.
I get much more upset when people who know I have OCD are just "waiting" for me to wash my hands over and over. I don't do that, people don't seem to understand that mental illness is not a cookie cutter situation, and what they see on TV is not real!
Now a confession: I worked at an animal shelter, and I spent years trying to find out what was wrong with these people who came in, surrendering their animals and acting so incredibly immature and nasty. For example, people threatening to throw their cat in front of a car if they had to sign a form.
Finally, a coworker said she thought that most of them probably had borderline personality disorder. Quite frankly, I was so releived to have an explaination that I clung to it for years. I don't know if I can disentangle myself from this idea now even if I wanted to.
I think the grief of a father passing is a little different than the grief of witnessing a classroom of students get sprayed.
On another note, I'm glad Stumbleupon introduced me to Doug Kyle.