Psychobabble: Which Expressions Do You Love to Hate?
Send me your favourite examples of psychobabble and I will publish them here on PsyBlog.
My first experience of 'psychobabble' was at school. Kids used to shout an abusive epithet across the playground and when some poor soul turned around to look they all cried in unison, "Complex!", as in the Freudian term 'Oedipus complex'.
As is usually the case with psychobabble it was a technical psychological term used out of context - not that I was sufficiently well-read (or stupid enough) to point that out at the time.
While this example is pretty lowbrow, psychobabble permeates all intellectual strata. Psychological discussions on the street, in print, on TV and online are filled with psychobabble, usually delivered with a straight face.
Sometimes respectable psychological terms escape from their cosy, sheltered academic homes and develop their 'babble' out in the wide world where they're ravaged by the uncultured masses and left almost unrecognisable. Other times the 'babble' is born fully-formed of various gurus, cultists, celebrities, columnists and others.
Here are a few pieces of psychobabble I currently love to hate:
- "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.
- "I'm alive so I must be addicted to breathing." 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.
- "Thank you for letting me vent." People don't talk about their emotions anymore, they 'vent'. Contrary to the psychobabble, though, people are not like steam engines.
- "You need to engage your right-brain". Refers to the purported importance of the right-side of the brain in creativity. I've moaned about this before.
- "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.
Send in your favourite psychobabble
These are just a few to get your bile flowing. Once you've worked yourself up sufficiently please send in your personal favourite(s). It could be psychobabble from any context: work, home, school, childhood, sport, TV - anything you like as long as it has some connection to psychology.
Then I'll publish them here as a list and we'll vote for our favourite bit of psychobabble!
Don't forget to include your name, or if you would prefer to submit anonymously then just let me know.
» You can post a comment below or email me directly. Look forward to reading them!
[Image credit: Ozyman]
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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."
I'm 18 years old and have studied Psychology A Level, and i quickly started to pick up on the psychobabble people in my age use. The most irritating one is the word "schizophrenia" which is wrongly used whenever someone refer to split personalities. I just cant hold myself back from being a besserwisser and telling them that they have no idea what schizophrenia is.
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. Someone says the above example is truly saying that when cleaning the kitchen, she has a disorder, but any time when she's not cleaning the kitchen she doesn't. This is offensive to people who actually live with mental illness daily. Unless it's interfering with your functioning, it's not a disorder.
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.
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.
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!
A boyfriend of mine did this a lot, and before I realised he was talking complete nonsense, it had a terribly destructive effect on my confidence! Not to mention on our (now, happily, terminated) relationship.
Lirone
My favorites: "He's totally projecting." "She definitely OCD/NPD/Some other diagnosis".
Thanks for all your nominations - great stuff! And thanks to those of you who have sent ideas by email, can't wait to share them with everyone...
Two for me. First is people-first language. "People with schizophrenia" "people with depression" "people who need people." It's disturbing to think you can make schizophrenia sound pleasant to the uninformed world if we don't say "schizophrenic."
The second is that 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."
As a student en route to obtaining a PhD in clinical psychology...one of the MOST ANNOYING THINGS EVER WHICH HAPPENS OH SO OFTEN:
When people confuse psychologists with psychiatrists!!!
The general public seems to have a very rudimentary understanding of the two VERY DIFFERENT professions...and I blame this on the manner in which the media portrays these occupations.
"Indigo Children." Bah. Humbug.
My favorite: using "fetish" to mean "a fascination with" rather than its true meaning (causing sexual arousal).
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.
Hands down, my biggest peeve is:
"Reptilian Brain"
I heard two doctors on Oprah (natch) 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.
After studying Psychology since A level (i'm now in my 3rd year at uni), I still find it really irritating when people ask me what I study, I say "Psychology" and they say "Oooh, can you read my mind?" at which point I roll my eyes and force a smile to get rid of them.
It's got to the point where I now reply "Yes, of course. What else do you think we learn?" with the most sarcastically seriousness I can muster at the time.
More often than not, it shuts them up!
I call this "psychologese", and yes, it is annoying and far too common. I wrote a blog about it over on Psychology Today - blog name In Therapy