Have you ever been to a hospital and observed the staff talking in medical lingo? If you are not familiar with this technical language yourself, it would surely have sounded both impressive and bewildering. Importantly, it would have added to the perceived authority and educational attainment of the medical staff.

This may come as a surprise to those who not in the know, but the mental health industry has long desired the status of the medical industry. Now, psychiatry is considered a part of medicine, as psychiatrists and psychiatric nurse practitioners do have a medical background. However, their prestige is lower than the rest of the medical field, largely because a level of awareness exists that what they practice is not on the same scientific level as mainstream medicine. This also goes for the therapy side of the equation. Psychology is not a part of medicine, though they have put much effort into creating a scientific veneer for their theories and practices, which unfortunately did not translate into real world results.

Regarding psychiatry, to give you an idea of how bad the situation is, imagine this scenario: a teenager is down and depressed after going through a bad relationship and a breakup, and a psychiatrist and her fellow teenage girlfriend are tasked with cheering her up. After having a discussion on the details of her situation and how she feels, the psychiatrist decides to try her out on Zoloft to see if it will work. Her girlfriend provides a sympathetic ear over the phone, then comes over with a pint of ice cream. Notice that neither party tested the level of neurotransmitters in her brain, nor took a brain scan to observe and measure changes. Both the psychiatrist and her girlfriend did the same thing: listen to her story and provide a substance to make her feel better. Despite all the years of university, the science of the average psychiatrist does not, in practice, really amount to more than that of the average barista. Yes, Zoloft may boost your mood, but so will a steaming hot cup of coffee!

Interestingly, the dearth of scientific evidence did not stop the mental health industry from persisting toward the goal of achieving a comparable level of scientific respectability as mainstream medicine. Along the way, they embraced what is essentially the next best thing. The next best thing to actually being scientific is to be perceived as being scientific. Now, I am not, at this point, going to accuse the giants of psychiatry and psychology of intentionally adapting medical-sounding terminology in order to mislead their patients. I believe that at least some of them genuinely thought that they could create a true science of human behavior and provide real cures. Therefore, they might as well go ahead and adapt a medicalized language.

The mental health industry actually succeeded at convincing many lay people that they are science-backed. This illusion has been greatly helped by adopting and creating a technical vocabulary. Over the years, psychiatry and psychology came up with some terminology that is genuinely useful, some that is redundant because common language already exists for what it describes, and some that is frankly goofy and pretentious. Because the medical field tends to use Greek and Latin in their lingo, a portion of psych terminology is also based on Greek and Latin.

I’ll go over some of their lingo and demystify it for you.

…

General Terminology

Superego: We already had a word for this one–conscience.

Cognitive dissonance: Conflicted state caused by a violated conscience. Curiously, you can look up multiple definitions of cognitive dissonance and they never actually mention the conscience. Maybe because psych is averse to anything remotely moralizing?

Anal or anal retentive: Describes someone who is fastidious.

Onychophagia: fingernailing biting

Hypnagogic or Hypnopompic Hallucinations: Psych describes these as harmless auditory and/or visual hallucinations one can experience during the period of falling asleep or waking up, respectively. Lay people know these experiences as “sleep paralysis.” I myself used to experience these. During one such episode, I felt something like a black fog come over me and pin me down. When I invoked the name of the Jesus in my mind, the thing flew off of me in a hurry and the so-called “hallucination” ended!

Affect: Emotions, moods,feelings, especially as externally observable. A psych professional may describe a patient as having a “blunted affect” or “affective blunting.” What this means in plain English is that the patient is expressionless.

Aphemia: Mutism.

Logorrhea: Rambling, wordy speech.

Schizophasia: Confused, repetitive speech; word salad.

Autokabalesis: Act of attempting suicide or self-harm by jumping from a high place.

…

Diagnoses

Intermittent explosive disorder: Anger problem.

Antisocial personality disorder: Sociopathy or psychopathy.

Alcohol use disorder: Drunk. When I worked at an addictions clinic, one of the clients was on social security disability due to a diagnosis of “alcohol abuse disorder.” I wonder how receptive the Social Security Administration would have been to his disability request if his diagnosis had instead been “drunkard.”

Binge eating disorder: Gluttony.

Oppositional defiant disorder: Bratty behavior in children.

Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder: Temper tantrums and moodiness in children and teens.

Kleptomania: Stealing addiction. This particular term has become normalized in everyday speech.

Substance-Induced Mood Disorder: Describes someone who is experiencing mood-specific side effects from abusing street drugs. Many people diagnosed with bipolar disorder actually have this.

Cyberchrondia: If you are on the web a lot researching your health symptoms, leading to “disruptions in the relationships with physicians and in the usual patterns of seeking and receiving health care” – meaning, you prefer to look into the matter yourself at home rather than paying to ask a doctor – then you could get slapped with this label.

Factitious Disorder Imposed on Self or Munchausen Syndrome: Faking illness for non-monetary benefits like attention and pity.

Mythomania or Pseudologia fantastica: Habitual lying.

Pathological Demand Avoidance: If you were just thinking to yourself that things can’t get any goofier with psychiatric diagnoses… well, just last year a psychotherapist suggested the diagnosis of “pathological demand avoidance” as the reason why a number of husbands ignore their wives and refuse to help them. Jump straight to the comments to see the scornful reaction from the general public!

…

Therapies & Techniques

Believe it or not, most if not all of us have used elements of these therapies in our lives even if we have never been to a psychotherapist or psychiatrist. Don’t believe me? Read on.

Rogerian therapy: Practitioners of this particular therapy hold that you are your own best guide and that their purpose is basically to provide an audience to listen to you as you talk about your issue. They abstain from offering advice but instead every so often offer comments designed to keep you talking on such as, “And what do you think you should do about that?” You may observe that people outside the psych profession do this also when someone comes to them with a problem and they don’t feel equipped or knowledgeable enough with that particular issue to offer solid advice.Personally, I think imagining an audience while talking to yourself works just as well as going to a Rogerian therapist, and it is also free.

Cognitive behavioral therapy: CBT, as it is called in shorthand, is perhaps the gold-standard of psycho-therapeutic techniques. It is also incredibly simple and straight forward to do. For a quick DIY, identify your negative thoughts and replace them with realistic thoughts. I myself used this technique recently in regards to the difficulty of selling clothes online. Instead of ruminating in my mind for the umpteenth time that nobody is buying in this market, instead I drew my attention to the reality that other people are making sales. Oh, and how come the selling platform is still up and running if nobody sells anything and no commissions are made to pay the bills? That said, truth be told, what really cheered me up the most was deciding to blindly trust God I would start making sales soon, but they don’t normally teach that technique in CBT…

Psychoanalysis: A summary that captures the main ideas could look like this: all your mental health problems stem from childhood traumas buried in your unconscious mind, your parents are often to blame (especially your mother), and in order to resolve these traumas, a variety of techniques must be employed to uncover the original traumas. Two of the various techniques are dream analysis and free association (which is the patient monologuing freely sans any filter, followed by the psychoanalyst’s interpretation). Going back to parent blaming… it is pretty common as it is, especially among teenagers, and does it really fix anything? As for dream analysis, most of us analyze our dreams for meaning, but on what basis can we be sure of the real meaning? What qualified Freud, or any other psychoanalyst, to understand dream language? I myself got tried-and-tested results by going to Christians inspired by the Bible and Holy Ghost, such as Kevin LA Ewing.

Strength-based therapy: This therapy is a 180 degree departure from psychoanalysis. Instead of digging for past trauma, the client is directed to focus on their strengths and to also reframe their weaknesses as strengths. Is it just me, or does strength-based therapy sound suspiciously like doing a job interview or writing a resume?

Operant conditioning: System of reward and punishment to encourage certain behaviors and discourage others. Unaware of this scientific-sounding label, your parents used this technique all throughout your childhood to mold you into a well-behaved adult. They did this whenever they yelled at you or spanked you for doing something bad or praised you or gave you a gift for doing something right.

More articles that might be of interest to you: