Talk:Psychobabble/Archives/2013

Name change
I just changed the name from Psycho-babble to Psychobabble (jargon) for 2 reasons: (1) to disambiguate it from the new article about the Psycho-Babble web site and (2) while we're at it, let's correct the spelling to WITHOUT a hyphen. (See all the dictionary references below on this talk page.)Nadirsofar 17:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I've updated the articles that link here and I fixed a double-redirect. This issue (about the spelling without a hyphen) has been discussed before and this is the time to fix it.Nadirsofar 17:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

This article as well as LGAT strongly needs NPOVing. I'm no native speaker and I consider this as jargon, so it's too hard for me to work on it myself. -- JeLuF


 * Indeed, for example: "Users of psychological jargon may argue that cynics have invented the term as a defence against the cynics' own deep, repressed fears and traumas." --PolyGnome 09:51, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Any support for 'psycho-babble
field'? ==

So far not one piece of evidence or one voice of support has been raised here to support the idea that "psycho-babble" is used to disparage the whole field. If no further support is voiced by October 15, 2005, let's eliminate that usage as unverified. At the most, it deserves a mention as a usage of the term -- not leading mention as the usage of the term, as is the case now. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:57, 8 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I've done this. The article's still going to need more work; someone seems to have used it to slide past the "Wikipedia is not a soapbox" rule:  "Aha!  I think that the whole field of psychology is a bunch of claptrap and I use the term 'psychobabble' to express my contempt!  If I say I'm just explaining what people who use the word 'psychobabble' mean when they use it, I can express at length my own disdain!" -- Antaeus Feldspar 19:00, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

The first some paragraphs of the article are wiki-washy and unsatisfying to the reader. I believe that at large, psychobabble is sometimes used as a pejorative to refer to the field, however that many such users would recognize the usage as a distortion. This may be why there are no dictionary references, and that may be fair.

More importantly I believe, and this should be put into dictionaries, that psychobabble is used derogatively, sincerely,,, and meaningfully,,, by those whose lives have suffered ill-effects that they attribute to the application of arguably flawed psychiatric dogma, in the case of a patient who is a loved one. Without exception, that dogma will have been delivered and applied, with associated language,,, the psychobabble,,, by a psychiatric professional.

As examples: A family may have the experience that the condition of their loved one worsens during management by a first psychiatrist. They seek second and third opinions and the different management plans, all delivered couched in what feels like psychobabble, turn out to be materially different and sometimes in conflict with each other. All the while, patient condition has worsened and now is in fact unrecoverable, and will shortly lead to suicide. None of the psychiatrists has offered a full diagnosis but, when pressed, one offers Bipolar. She is known as an expert in Bipolar. Another offers Schizoaffective Personality Disorder or Schizophrenia. He is known as a Schizophrenia expert. The third shies away from any traditional diagnostic category and explains the illness more from first principles. The father and mother of the family, the parents of the patient, repeatedly, and correctly in some cases, attempt to explain to the 3 psychiatrists what they think is happening with their daughter but the advice is rejected as hearsay from the insufficiently qualified. A tortuous sequence of events, incomprehensible to the rational mind, is already in chain and, within days, the patient is dead, leaving a shattered, loving husband, two motherless young children and, of course, forever grieving parents.

If we accept that in some such cases the greatest failure of management is in the shortcomings of professional psychiatric knowledge, even when the psychiatrists concerned may be perfectly representative of the broader psychiatric community, is it then unreasonable or not meaningful that the term psychobabble be applied to the very arguably misguided pontifications of those professionals? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.20.148.64 (talk) 00:21, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Revisions
I'm not sure how or even where to say this, either practically speaking or stylistically, but it seems to me there is a general problem with this entry. IMHO Psychobabble doesn't seem to be a sufficiently discrete concept to merit a unique entry here. However, again IMHO, there is a powerful message in it all regarding perhaps expropriation of misunderstood jargon/concepts that are then used to act as evidence and support for other theories, and in the abscence of any other significant supporting evidence. What seems to be being said here is that psychobabble is the inappropriate use of a particular subset of a particular jargon thenwhich is then itself used as both a jargon and the sole significant support for other theories and practices. For instance, the examples of New Age practices. But then the article stumbles into the "jargon trap" by seeming to claim that the sole rights of certain terminology are held by virtue of a form of social status - professionals v. non-professionals. Surely definitions have to stand or fall by themselves. Their validity or worth surely cannot be determined by who uses them. Clearly words may be used inexpertly by us all, but I checked on the word "dysfunction" as it is cited here, and there is precedent for its use in non-psychological arenas. The usage in other fields would seem to be both accepted and documented. The concept of this article can be applied as well if not better to Information Technology where words are given different meanings. Or to the medical profession where the word "shock" means a collapse of the circulation system and not a reaction of surprise. However, none could say that the word "shock" should only be used by Doctors nor that Doctors should find an alternative. The reason being that the usages of the word have significant overlap. Apologies if this comment is too long and/or in the wrong place and/or unwelcome generally. (I did read all the guidelines but couldn't see any other way to comment)

LookingGlass 13:29, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

--120.20.148.64 (talk) 00:44, 1 April 2013 (UTC) I agree to the letter with the remarks made by LookingGlass.

Based in the Princeton WordNet definition cited above, Psychobabble refers not to jargon, but to the usage of jargon. I corrected the first sentence to refer to the usage, but preserved an expanded concept based in popular appreciation of the term "psychobabble". Usage of the term psychobabble as popularized in Rosen's well-known text of 1977 refers at least as much to speech (written or spoken), and to the net load of jargon in speech, as to the jargon that loads speech.

Except in the overly narrow definition, the article prior to my edits correctly discussed both usage and the jargon itself. It would be difficult to discuss use of the jargon without reference to the elements of the jargon, but the definition cannot properly limit psychobabble to the elements that load speech. In the "compare with" section the introductory definition of psychobabble as jargon was already rendered dubious by the phrase "words used in psychobabble". Precisely, babble is speech, and jargon is words. But since the word "psychobabble" itself is now widely used as jargon, its meanings are diverse.

In at least one instance, meanings within sentences were contradictory. "Sources ... suggested to be using ... include phraseology..." Phraseology is not a source that uses, it is a usage by a source.

I'm moving the following sentence here because after an extended wait, we have no citation: The term dates from the 1960s, the era of origin of popular widespread analysis and of counselling groups. It was coined by science fiction writers Walt Richmond in 1961 at Milford, Pennsylvania at Arrowhead. Though we have no citation, we should not be too quick to conclude a basis will not be found for the assertion. The talk page post attributed to Rosen may still be a less than complete statement of origin, because the writer claims coinage but doesn't cite an exhaustive literature review to determine whether the term was used before he believed he originally coined it. But Rosen's published work is widely circulated and is the most probably factor in the spread of popular usage. Similar problems plagues the claim that it was coined by "writers" Walt Richmond. The paragraph attributes the coinage both to a decade and to an era, to both a writer and to writers. The qualifying adjectives "popular" and "widespread" are so vague that when attributed to both an era and a decade, and to different topics -- pscyhoanalysis and group therapy -- each of which can be found in examples prior to the vague time period in question, it seems unlikely that this is a precise statement of origin. What does it mean that the term "dates" from this era? We are offered a specific date, within a few hundred days, but tangible no evidence to establish origin.

Apologies to Rosen if the following doesn't adequately summarize his text: The text explores a virtual explosion of pscyhological treatments in professional and non-professional settings related on conversational approaches that failed to address underlying social and personal conflicts. If I find a copy of the book, I might more accurately summarize its premise.

I'm also exiling the following to this talk page for how. Is the paragraph an example of pscyhobabble or is it about pscyhobabble? It seems to me an effort to offer an example of psychobabble about psychobabble, but we have no citation. Who are these "critics" and which "users of psyhological jargon" are addressed in the paragraph"?
 * Users of psychological jargon argue that critics have invented the term "Psychobabble" as a defense against the critics' own deep, repressed fears and traumas. By attacking and undermining the whole language of personal exploration, the critics attempt to ensure that the time when they may have to acknowledge these parts of their own psyches gets pushed into the distant future.

Critics would probably reject this argument -- because to them, it is psychobabble. The claim that critics "would probably" reject the unattributed argument is speculative. If "critics" do indeed reject the argument, we should have a citation. Also, each side of an argument is critical, so describing one of the parties as "critics" can lead to confusion. ProveReader 21:41, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Deleted reference to "psychopablum" because Google returns 31 hits, most of which seem to point to Wikipedia forks, in one case as a derivative of "pablum". The link here pointed back to a deleted article defining a neologism at best. That left orphaned sentences in that section "compare with" and in "origins" so I consolidated those sections elsewhere.

"Each with a usage example and an explanation of their possible English meaning." This is a sentence fragment, and not reflective of the content of the list that follows. The list is problematic in that it is overly general, but I'm not tackling that just now. ProveReader 22:10, 21 January 2006 (UTC)