I enjoyed "Steep Learning Curve": if the curve is steep, that means that you are learning quickly and easily.
Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
181–190 of 354 posts
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a standard terminology that is recent and only in English. It has nothing to do with the original meanings of the words "symptom" and "sign" in English and other languages (where "symptom" is any sign of a disease, while "sign" is any sign of anything). The standard medical terminology in other languages is "subjective symptoms" and "objective symptoms". In my opinion, whoever has chosen these artificial and ar…
Kind of confused by what you mean "in other languages" and then give examples in English. What are these other languages and words? If you say the meaning of these words are different in other languages, then aren't you translating them incorrectly? > Someone who wants new words should invent them, not change the traditional meanings of other words. Language changes over time. The meaning of words can change. Definit…
>What are these other languages and words?
From what I see from quick search word "symptom" as written here is also present in Czech, Danish, German, Norwegian, Polish and Swedish.
Many other languages has variations (e.g. French's "symptôme" or Latvian's "simptoms").
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#183Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#184This isn’t used in medical circles anymore but I’m shocked that it’s still acceptable to label something or someone as “hysterical”, which I believe implies erratic behavior that ties back to having a uterus.
To be fair, compaining about that makes about as much sense as compaining about the racist implications of the term "good Samaritan", although I agree that, in retrospect, it's pleasantly surprising that social justice warriors haven't tried to ram though a de facto ban anyway.
If I understand correctly, Samaritans have the same ethnic roots as Jews. The differences were more religious and ideological than racial. So with that in mind, saying the term "good Samaritan" is specifically racist doesn't really hold water. Xenophobic, maybe. The lines kind of blur when you're talking about groups that are divided by some odd combination of ethnicity, religion, and nationality.
Regardless, if you look at the actual context, the Parable of the Good Samaritan is arguably meant as a message against racism and preconceived notions about people from other ethnic groups or countries.
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#185I am surprised there is no mention of the word "histrionic" which is completely out-of-date and insulting to women.
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#186Looks like Psychologists came up with something as complicated as the human mind. I found this very strange: Symptom: (under Oxymorons) (41) Observable symptom. This term, which appears in nearly 700 manuscripts according to Google Scholar, conflates signs with symptoms. Signs are observable features of a disorder; symptoms are unobservable features of a disorder that can only be reported by patients (Lilienfeld et a…
/me not a MD, and from UK, not America.
I have always understood symptoms to be the patient's reported experience; and signs to be observable manifestations of a condition. So yes, a symptom is by definition not observable, and therefore "oxymoron" is correct.
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#187No post body was provided.
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#188It is good to see awareness being raised of accidental philosophical positions, sometimes unwittingly assumed through word choice. For example, I was starting to doubt whether anyone realizes that they make a leap whenever they imply physiology/biology is the cause of what happens in our consciousness (or indeed causes consciousness to happen), but entry 29 reassured me not all hope is lost (emphasis mine): > Neverth…
This uncertainty stems from the lack of rigorous proof. Medicine these days is all about statistics and correlation. It's "we gave drug A to people with B and we observed effects C occurring D% of the time". In way too many cases there is no exact model or understanding of how things actually work, just inferences from observed effects.
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I sure hope social psychologists don't use torture. Read up on psychologist’s participation in the Guantanamo prison camp torture program. Indeed many psychologists did use torture, and it is something of a really dark spot in the history of the American Psychology Association.
Did these psychologists think they were helping the greater good? And who convinced them?
This scandal generated a whole host of reports, it collapsed the APA leadership. Books have been written about it. I am not a journalist, nor a historian. And I don’t have enough knowledge about it to answer any detailed questions about it, other then the fact that it happened. I’m sure you can find information by googling e.g. “APA torture” or “James Mitchell” and “Bruce Jessen” the two most prominent psychologists guilty of torturing people.
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#190> (3) Autism epidemic.
Uh, I'm having more and more trouble believing this is just an increase in diagnosis rates. That's what we said 13 years ago when I was graduating college, and yet the rates have actually increased very dramatically even since 2010 (from 1/68 to 1/44) a 54% increase.
I appreciate that it's useful to consider alternative explanations of data, but presuming an alternative explanation is valid for over 20 years without hard data? Really?