“A rose by any other name is still a rose.” At least that’s the way the saying goes. But is this necessarily the case? Words are representations of objects (referents) that are defined by other words and thereby incorporate, often by accident, what is and is not important about the object. In the Western paradigm, or meaning system, what is dominantly important is that which can be seen empirically, or proven logically. Ironically, it is this very empirical existence of the individual that the psychologist / psychiatrist tends to back nervously away from, choosing instead to work in categories & classifications according the dominant scientific paradigm. Creating “kinds” is a primary task of scientists—classifications of reality, which make communication easier, and reality more assessable to logic. This “kind-making” is not a bad practice for the scientist, and arguably helpful to many different fields. The problem for psychology in adopting a “kind-making” approach to human behavior is that humans don’t classify out as nicely as the periodic table. So a great deal of “picking and choosing” has to occur for the psychology to make its classifications. This means some features will be necessarily excluded, and others will be included in the considerations of normalcy and disorder.
Linguistically, this can pose a few problems from the start. Take for example the word “face.” What comprises the face? We would be quick to define it as the front part of the head containing the eyes, nose, and mouth. Some might even add the lips, chin, cheeks, forehead, or eyebrows in their definition. But what do we make of the small trough beneath the nose and above the upper lip? What exactly do we call this feature of the face? When I was growing up, it was referred to as “the booger ditch.” While there most likely exists a medical term for this indentation, there is no common word for it in English. It would be about the last thing one would use to describe the face, because no clear word to describe this area exists. Our system of meaning considers this area obsolete, even though it is present on nearly every human face. In fact, one of the only times the area is noticed at all is when there is an area-specific deformity there, such as a cleft-pallet.
The singularity of the “booger ditch” works against itself in the area of definitions: eyes stare, blink, and tear; mouths move and express, and noses bleed and run. What does “the booger ditch” really do? It doesn’t seem to have much of a purpose for English speakers, therefore as a singular feature this area is conveniently marginalized in our vocabulary. So is a rose by any other name still a rose? The answer is a solid “yes,” but only if our systems of meaning, relevance, and subsequent classifications are identical—or at best, similar. It is possible to envision a language in which the words “red,” “petals,” and “stem” are not the primary features a native speaker identifies with a rose. And while conversing with this native speaker and a divergent interpretation, we may be discussing the same empirical referent, albeit with two completely different understandings. And most importantly, even if we come to the same understanding, we have almost no way of realizing what may have been marginalized and framed into our meanings.
This is cogent to psychological classifications for one primary reason: in generating a label for aberrant behaviors, one chooses to include and marginalize various features of the disorder. What is marginalized is often what is seemingly unrelated, or without purpose. In the Western paradigm, behaviors are included as referents for disorder, as are speech acts, namely because these activities can be seen and/or heard. Provided we all agree together that the empirical referent we see and hear is fundamentally real and not imagined, we are diagnosed as being relatively ‘whole,’ psychologically speaking. Yet what our psychologists operating under the scientific paradigm may quickly marginalize as purposeless is often what cannot be empirically seen or heard, something “incorporeal,” if you will.
Interestingly, incorporeal carries with it two meanings. First, as defined by both Webster’s dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of English, “incorporeal” means that which pertains to the immaterial, or the spirit. Second, in the field of law, “incorporeal” is something that has no material existence in itself, but attaches itself to some actual thing. An example of the latter definition would be the concept of rent. The house I am renting is corporeal, and I, the occupier of the house, am also corporeal, as is the money I use to pay the rent; however, the rent I pay is incorporeal. The very concept of rent is itself incorporeal, but integral to the ideology of economy and property. Hence to carry this concept over to the ideology named psychology, the behaviors and speech acts manifested within the meaning system are necessarily empirical, while the concept of “disorder,” or a root cause, remains ideological, perhaps even illusionary.
Second, and notably absent in psychological theories, is the definition of incorporeal as “spiritual, or that which pertains to the spirit.” Linguistically, the singularity of the concept of spirit lends itself to be easily marginalized. It is difficult to speak of outside of metaphor. Most things spiritual are, in a sense, the “booger ditch” on the face of scientific psychological theory. This is largely due to the lack of an empirical base and therein, the spiritual type of incorporeal meaning must be determined retroactively, as in a metaphor, or the creation of a new signifier (word).
Safouan describes this quite particularly by relaying the story of one man’s use of the word, “famillionare.” An apparently well-known fellow described his familiarity and social popularity by creating a new morphological term entitled “famillionare.” The signified meaning, which existed semantically in unconscious or incorporeal form, engendered retroactively through language. Now it is possible to imagine a kind-making exercise in which one picks popular millionaires, and locks them into a new classification called “famillionare.” Famillionares existed among us for many years before the creation of the class, and it can be argued that we subconsciously recognized these famillionares as famillionares when we previously interacted with them, or saw them on television. Now that we have brought these famillionares to the surface of thought, we can arrange them better, define them, set limits on how much popularity or wealth is needed to become a famillionare, and perhaps even begin to deal with the anxiety famillionares face on a daily basis. This new “kind” of anxiety is called “famillionitius.”
Why is any of this significant? Because psychology would have us believe that disorders are transformations of, or deviations from established behavioral norms rather than productions of an incorporeal belief structures belonging to an individual. In other words, the sources of some meanings are produced intrinsically and separated from the accepted system of meaning. I may have been suffering from famillionitius, years before I had a word for it. This brings us back to Jung who insists that the “magic” of a classification derived from a statistical mean dangerously grants us the power to negate, or transform, individual meaning. In the same way, language classifications may actually be “magically creating” kinds of aberrant behavior. As soon as we begin to discuss a subject from a theoretical standpoint, the prescriptive productions of the individual are interpreted and defined descriptively.
This is even more dangerous than would first appear. Systems of meaning are not easily challenged; it in fact takes a certain degree of linguistic effort to do so because the words afforded to us are limited by the meaning system. These words actually have profound influences in the way in which we think, as noted by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The Sapir-Whorf theory of Linguistic determinism implies that the kinds of available words within a system of language significantly shape perceptions of the world, a type of unconscious self-fulfilling prophecy. If some meanings can only be revealed retroactively though language, we may very well be marginalizing meanings by a necessarily limited definition of “disorder” X. For example, “Jerry” never realized he suffered from “famillionitus,” but after learning about the term, he now interprets all his anxiety as derivative of the conditions of his wealth and fame. Jerry understands now why he yells at his wife and kicks his dog. If no other language is advanced to help Jerry define his activity, he is linguistically determined to filter his meanings through this new descriptive language, as opposed to his prescriptive, unconscious tendencies.
In a more recent study (2001), linguists compared emotional expressions in English with those of Russian. The study revealed that the English language to a much greater degree, objectified emotions more than the Russian language. Whereas the Russian language mostly allowed present tense verbs to describe feelings of anger or frustration, the English speakers employed more adjectives expressing emotional “states.” This is not uncommon for English speakers when compared to many other languages. Consider the morphology of the English statement “He will like me.” In our language, the words appear independently, autonomous, and objectified to a large degree. This is not the case in most other languages. In Swahili for example, the statement, “He will like me,” would be represented in a single word, transcribed something like this, “atanipenda.” The phoneme “ni” significantly embedded in the word represents the English word “me.” The objectification of the subject is most noted in younger Western languages, particularly English. This objectification is clearly an influence on the way in which we see the world, indicating that even our language code can limit expression for the subjective.
Given these considerations, it is not too far of a leap to see the way in which psychology utilizes language, particularly through classifications, as a type of “incantation,” whose magic is capable of shifting the incorporeal productions of individual-prescriptive meanings toward objectified theories of “self” from which one deviates descriptively.
(To be continued...)
References:
Journal of Literature and Psychology, Volume 46, Issue ½ (2000), pages 29-42.
Cambridge Encyclopedia Of Language, 2nd Edition. David Crystal, editor: Cambridge University Press (1997), p. 15.
Expressive emotions in multiple languages. Jean-Marc Dewalele & Aneta Pavenko: Language Learning 52, 2 (2002).
Linguistically, this can pose a few problems from the start. Take for example the word “face.” What comprises the face? We would be quick to define it as the front part of the head containing the eyes, nose, and mouth. Some might even add the lips, chin, cheeks, forehead, or eyebrows in their definition. But what do we make of the small trough beneath the nose and above the upper lip? What exactly do we call this feature of the face? When I was growing up, it was referred to as “the booger ditch.” While there most likely exists a medical term for this indentation, there is no common word for it in English. It would be about the last thing one would use to describe the face, because no clear word to describe this area exists. Our system of meaning considers this area obsolete, even though it is present on nearly every human face. In fact, one of the only times the area is noticed at all is when there is an area-specific deformity there, such as a cleft-pallet.
The singularity of the “booger ditch” works against itself in the area of definitions: eyes stare, blink, and tear; mouths move and express, and noses bleed and run. What does “the booger ditch” really do? It doesn’t seem to have much of a purpose for English speakers, therefore as a singular feature this area is conveniently marginalized in our vocabulary. So is a rose by any other name still a rose? The answer is a solid “yes,” but only if our systems of meaning, relevance, and subsequent classifications are identical—or at best, similar. It is possible to envision a language in which the words “red,” “petals,” and “stem” are not the primary features a native speaker identifies with a rose. And while conversing with this native speaker and a divergent interpretation, we may be discussing the same empirical referent, albeit with two completely different understandings. And most importantly, even if we come to the same understanding, we have almost no way of realizing what may have been marginalized and framed into our meanings.
This is cogent to psychological classifications for one primary reason: in generating a label for aberrant behaviors, one chooses to include and marginalize various features of the disorder. What is marginalized is often what is seemingly unrelated, or without purpose. In the Western paradigm, behaviors are included as referents for disorder, as are speech acts, namely because these activities can be seen and/or heard. Provided we all agree together that the empirical referent we see and hear is fundamentally real and not imagined, we are diagnosed as being relatively ‘whole,’ psychologically speaking. Yet what our psychologists operating under the scientific paradigm may quickly marginalize as purposeless is often what cannot be empirically seen or heard, something “incorporeal,” if you will.
Interestingly, incorporeal carries with it two meanings. First, as defined by both Webster’s dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of English, “incorporeal” means that which pertains to the immaterial, or the spirit. Second, in the field of law, “incorporeal” is something that has no material existence in itself, but attaches itself to some actual thing. An example of the latter definition would be the concept of rent. The house I am renting is corporeal, and I, the occupier of the house, am also corporeal, as is the money I use to pay the rent; however, the rent I pay is incorporeal. The very concept of rent is itself incorporeal, but integral to the ideology of economy and property. Hence to carry this concept over to the ideology named psychology, the behaviors and speech acts manifested within the meaning system are necessarily empirical, while the concept of “disorder,” or a root cause, remains ideological, perhaps even illusionary.
Second, and notably absent in psychological theories, is the definition of incorporeal as “spiritual, or that which pertains to the spirit.” Linguistically, the singularity of the concept of spirit lends itself to be easily marginalized. It is difficult to speak of outside of metaphor. Most things spiritual are, in a sense, the “booger ditch” on the face of scientific psychological theory. This is largely due to the lack of an empirical base and therein, the spiritual type of incorporeal meaning must be determined retroactively, as in a metaphor, or the creation of a new signifier (word).
Safouan describes this quite particularly by relaying the story of one man’s use of the word, “famillionare.” An apparently well-known fellow described his familiarity and social popularity by creating a new morphological term entitled “famillionare.” The signified meaning, which existed semantically in unconscious or incorporeal form, engendered retroactively through language. Now it is possible to imagine a kind-making exercise in which one picks popular millionaires, and locks them into a new classification called “famillionare.” Famillionares existed among us for many years before the creation of the class, and it can be argued that we subconsciously recognized these famillionares as famillionares when we previously interacted with them, or saw them on television. Now that we have brought these famillionares to the surface of thought, we can arrange them better, define them, set limits on how much popularity or wealth is needed to become a famillionare, and perhaps even begin to deal with the anxiety famillionares face on a daily basis. This new “kind” of anxiety is called “famillionitius.”
Why is any of this significant? Because psychology would have us believe that disorders are transformations of, or deviations from established behavioral norms rather than productions of an incorporeal belief structures belonging to an individual. In other words, the sources of some meanings are produced intrinsically and separated from the accepted system of meaning. I may have been suffering from famillionitius, years before I had a word for it. This brings us back to Jung who insists that the “magic” of a classification derived from a statistical mean dangerously grants us the power to negate, or transform, individual meaning. In the same way, language classifications may actually be “magically creating” kinds of aberrant behavior. As soon as we begin to discuss a subject from a theoretical standpoint, the prescriptive productions of the individual are interpreted and defined descriptively.
This is even more dangerous than would first appear. Systems of meaning are not easily challenged; it in fact takes a certain degree of linguistic effort to do so because the words afforded to us are limited by the meaning system. These words actually have profound influences in the way in which we think, as noted by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The Sapir-Whorf theory of Linguistic determinism implies that the kinds of available words within a system of language significantly shape perceptions of the world, a type of unconscious self-fulfilling prophecy. If some meanings can only be revealed retroactively though language, we may very well be marginalizing meanings by a necessarily limited definition of “disorder” X. For example, “Jerry” never realized he suffered from “famillionitus,” but after learning about the term, he now interprets all his anxiety as derivative of the conditions of his wealth and fame. Jerry understands now why he yells at his wife and kicks his dog. If no other language is advanced to help Jerry define his activity, he is linguistically determined to filter his meanings through this new descriptive language, as opposed to his prescriptive, unconscious tendencies.
In a more recent study (2001), linguists compared emotional expressions in English with those of Russian. The study revealed that the English language to a much greater degree, objectified emotions more than the Russian language. Whereas the Russian language mostly allowed present tense verbs to describe feelings of anger or frustration, the English speakers employed more adjectives expressing emotional “states.” This is not uncommon for English speakers when compared to many other languages. Consider the morphology of the English statement “He will like me.” In our language, the words appear independently, autonomous, and objectified to a large degree. This is not the case in most other languages. In Swahili for example, the statement, “He will like me,” would be represented in a single word, transcribed something like this, “atanipenda.” The phoneme “ni” significantly embedded in the word represents the English word “me.” The objectification of the subject is most noted in younger Western languages, particularly English. This objectification is clearly an influence on the way in which we see the world, indicating that even our language code can limit expression for the subjective.
Given these considerations, it is not too far of a leap to see the way in which psychology utilizes language, particularly through classifications, as a type of “incantation,” whose magic is capable of shifting the incorporeal productions of individual-prescriptive meanings toward objectified theories of “self” from which one deviates descriptively.
(To be continued...)
References:
Journal of Literature and Psychology, Volume 46, Issue ½ (2000), pages 29-42.
Cambridge Encyclopedia Of Language, 2nd Edition. David Crystal, editor: Cambridge University Press (1997), p. 15.
Expressive emotions in multiple languages. Jean-Marc Dewalele & Aneta Pavenko: Language Learning 52, 2 (2002).
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