Psychobabble

From Wikipedia:

Psychobabble (a neologism [newly created word] portmanteau of "psychology" or "psychoanalysis" and "babble") is a form of speech or writing that uses psychological jargon, buzzwords, and esoteric language to create an impression of truth or plausibility. The term implies that the speaker or writer lacks the experience and understanding necessary for the proper use of psychological terms. Additionally, it may imply that the content of speech deviates markedly from common sense and good judgement.

Some buzzwords that are commonly heard in psychobabble have come into widespread use in business management, motivational seminars, self-help, folk psychology, and popular psychology.

Frequent use of psychobabble can associate a clinical, psychological word with meaningless, or less meaningful, buzzword definitions. Laypersons often use such words when they describe life problems as clinical maladies even though the clinical terms are not meaningful or appropriate.

Most professions develop a unique vocabulary which, with frequent use, may become commonplace buzzwords. Professional psychologists may reject the "psychobabble" label when it is applied to their own special terminology.

The allusions to psychobabble imply that some psychological concepts lack precision and have become meaningless or pseudoscientific. Science demands the testing of ideas in experiments whose results are repeatable. In this context and since the scientific method is generally replaced by inductive reasoning in psychology, it does not qualify as a science....

• Psychobabble was defined by the writer who coined the word, R.D. Rosen, as:

a set of repetitive verbal formalities that kills off the very spontaneity, candour, and understanding it pretends to promote. It’s an idiom that reduces psychological insight to a collection of standardized observations that provides a frozen lexicon to deal with an infinite variety of problems.

(Continue reading the above in the article Psychobabble at Wikipedia.)

In other words, so-called "mental health professionals" just make up words for things, whenever they like, and give those words meanings which may have nothing to do with reality. Then they use those words (and associated concepts) to (supposedly) "treat" (supposedly) "sick" people, while charging very high fees, and enriching themselves at the same time.

Psychobabble as applied to BoyLovers

BoyLovers have been a favorite target of so-called "mental health professionals" since German psychiatrist von Krafft-Ebing first introduced and medicalized the concept of pedophilia in the early 1900s, and also first made homosexuality into a "medical problem" rather than just a problem of what may or not be acceptable morality. Some of the terms used when referring to and treating BoyLovers for their (supposed) deviance are:

• pedophilia is a paraphilia, a "misdirection" of the natural sexual impulse
• Pedophiles exhibit "deviant behavior"
• pedophilia is a "mental disorder" and requires treatment
• pedophiles are "in denial" about themselves and the effects of their activities
• the necessity of reconceptualizing the (supposed) "harms" that they (supposedly) cause to their young friends

See also

• Pseudoscience
• The DSM: Psychiatry's Deadliest Scam (film)
• Psychiatry: An Industry of Death (film)
• Whores of the Court (book)
• Sociogenesis
• Iatrogenesis
• Medicalization

External links

• Wikipedia article on Psychobabble
• Other Wikipedia articles cited above:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morals

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deviance_(sociology)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Krafft-Ebing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzzwords