Isn't Psychology another term to avoid if we are havind a Neurophysiplogy term?
Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
71–80 of 354 posts
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#72If anything, I find this to be a, perhaps unintentional, damning indictment of psychology and psychiatry in general. If your discipline cannot clearly define things in a reasonably concrete and provable way, such that it is readily apparent to the patients and the public at large, and also such that the language effectively clarifies itself out of necessity, then much of what you do needs to be strongly questioned --…
> I'm reminded of e.g. the term "neurodivergent." It's a good thing to look at, but how do you falsify it? Who can stand up and say "I'm definitely not neurodivergent?" If you can't do that, the term is not very helpful.
I mean, that's not a diagnosis. If you mean just generally and not psychology specific then you are going to have to throw out most english adjectives. Like you can't falsify "im hungry", "im smart", "im dumb".
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not the case. Often the "politically correct" version is not actually more correct, but is replacing some common phrase that is declared obnoxious by some very small unrepresentative minority of people who coincidentally make their living as activists. Yes you can be houseless but not homeless, but you can also be homeless and not houseless. It's an utterly stupid distinction predicated on an intentionally in…
Some iconic precursors to PC speech was the redefinition of role titles. Janitor which everyone was familiar with would be replaced with "sanitation engineer" or something similar which conveyed less what the person did do.
I think it's worse than that because it actually devalues the role of engineer, and the role of janitor by presenting it as something it's not.
A sanitation engineer sounds like someone that knows how to safely build sewers or run a sewage processing plant. i.e. something you'd have a formal education and be accredited for.
With respect for honest hardworking janitors everywhere, that's not the same thing as minor plumbing or ensuring that places are properly cleaned. Neither task is engineering.
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“I understand that you’re a neurosurgeon.”
(Bert grins.) “…No; I’m a barber. But a lot of people make that mistake.”
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unhoused vs homeless looks like a good example of a euphemism treatmill (in progress). Their state is not being altered by the "finer" wording instead it sounds pretentious and condescending. There are a lot of these political correct terms that are being used more cynically by now, however I'd prefer to not open that can of worms.
Good example of this from the article: "alcohol use disorder (formerly called alcoholism)"
pedantically, I find alcohol use disorder more accurate to my internal definition of condition and disease.
What we call things matter: as even slight changes in wording affect how people perceive things - so great care should be use when deciding what vernacular we should adopt generally.
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not the case. Often the "politically correct" version is not actually more correct, but is replacing some common phrase that is declared obnoxious by some very small unrepresentative minority of people who coincidentally make their living as activists. Yes you can be houseless but not homeless, but you can also be homeless and not houseless. It's an utterly stupid distinction predicated on an intentionally in…
Some iconic precursors to PC speech was the redefinition of role titles. Janitor which everyone was familiar with would be replaced with "sanitation engineer" or something similar which conveyed less what the person did do.
Right, but that's a fictional example. No-one has actually unironically called a janitor a "sanitation engineer".
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#76If anything, I find this to be a, perhaps unintentional, damning indictment of psychology and psychiatry in general. If your discipline cannot clearly define things in a reasonably concrete and provable way, such that it is readily apparent to the patients and the public at large, and also such that the language effectively clarifies itself out of necessity, then much of what you do needs to be strongly questioned --…
So, for all the many things in the world that cannot be defined in "a reasonably concrete and provable way" or where a statement cannot be "falsified", no study is worthwhile.
More or less this position: nothing worthwhile from Wittgenstein beyond the Tractatus and specifically, forget about the Philosophical Investigations.
It's not an indictment of a field that the subject matter is not susceptible to description in terms that are definitely falsifiable. Of course, definite terminology can be very helpful where it does apply, but it can also be used to oversimplify complex questions in a way that obfuscates them. But there's no law that nature must always be subject to description in a "concrete and provable way", especially not by human languages. By not taking seriously anything but disciplines that can be boiled down to true-false propositions, we'd miss huge amounts of knowledge that are useful and helpful.
Especially fields like psychology where so many important observations simply cannot be broken down into concrete statements or provable propositions in the way you seem to mean those words.
On the other hand, it's also very important to be careful of misuse of terms such as "true" and "false", for example, they can have very different meanings when we're talking about logic or observation, answers to examination questions, romance or religion. In this particular exchange, by true do we mean scientifically true or logically true?
Or, how indeed would anyone stand up and say whether something is "definitely not damning" or "definitely not unintentional" actually?
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#77I disagree with the "steep learning curve" point. The X axis is acquired knowledge, and the Y axis is the effort required. I don't know why people assume the X axis is time. Not all graphs are temporal.
It's standard practice to plot independent variables on the x-axis and dependent on the y. To my knowledge, this is how learning curves are typically plotted as well, and the use of "steep" is usually a misnomer.
Is there a reason you believe people have this unintuitive plot in mind, rather than simply conflating with the difficulty of physically scaling a steep slope?
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not the case. Often the "politically correct" version is not actually more correct, but is replacing some common phrase that is declared obnoxious by some very small unrepresentative minority of people who coincidentally make their living as activists. Yes you can be houseless but not homeless, but you can also be homeless and not houseless. It's an utterly stupid distinction predicated on an intentionally in…
"first, do no harm" includes psychological safety. To use a bold example, there's a difference between telling your client they are "overweight" and telling them they are a "fat ass".
I think I agree with the sentiment, but being overweight is a characteristic of someone’s body. A fat arse is a part of a body. You can be overweight without a fat arse and vice versa, those are not identical.
I would naïvely think that “fat arse” is vulgar or insulting enough (or at the very least way too informal) not to use it with someone you’re not familiar with. This has nothing to do with political correctness.
You can ruin some people’s day by calling them ginger. I would expect a psychologist to be sensitive to this sort of things (do no harm, indeed), but that’s not a good reason to make everyone stop using that word.
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Frankly, if your standard for a good definition is that it is readily apparent to the public at large , then pretty much every academic discipline will fail your rigour test. Even (or especially) mathematics. Which should make it clear that this is an unfair and useless standard to hold psychology up to.
Fair, "at large" is a bit extreme. This is a spectrum. But psychology appears to be far worse than the others, even reading from this paper. I'm a lawyer, and even law isn't this bad. "Symptoms are unobservable?"
Law, really? Aren't there a lot of legal terms (like 'ownership', 'possession' 'contract',...) that have precise legal definitions that may differ in crucial aspects from their colloquial usage?
I think you're confusing a definition being easy to understand with it being well-defined. Mathematical definitions are often hard to grasp exactly because they are so well-defined. If you want something to be easily understandable by a lot of people (especially outside the discipline), you'll usually have to sacrifice rigor.
Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
#80"Passive aggressive" is another very often misused term IMHO.