Language Essay
Rachel
Professor Danner
ENGWR 302
November 24, 2013
Word Count- 1250
Essay #5 Most professions or trades use language specific to that line of work. In the workplace of psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists, there is a specific language used in assessing, diagnosing, and treating clients and patients. I have come to be familiar with this as my mother is a therapist and we have talked about her work and diagnosing people with a variety of mental health disorders. The problem with such language and expressing that language in a book like the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) is that it can be used against people in a way that is not healing but harmful and something that very often too few people consider. This language is sometimes used to take very human and real and normal life situations, like bereavement and trauma and sadness and anxiety, and somehow attach a medical diagnosis to them. And, of course, if there is a medical diagnosis, than there must be an accompanying treatment or cure for a cost. According to Philip Hickey in his article entitled, “Behaviorism and Mental Health” (2011) in 1952, homosexuality was listed in the DSM as a sociopathic personality disturbance and according to the American Psychiatric Association homosexuality was a mental illness up until 1974. Neil Postman states in his essay The Word Weavers/The World Makers, “By naming an event and categorizing it as a “thing”, we create a vivid and more or less permanent map of what the world is like.” (853) That is what happened in the world of psychology and psychiatry regarding homosexual behavior. The American Psychiatric Association agreed that this “thing”, homosexuality, is an illness and we are
Page 1 attaching a name to it: sociopathic personality disorder. It suddenly becomes something very different by the use of those three words, something more frightening and more dangerous sounding according to Hickey (2011). The language of psychiatry,
Professor Danner
ENGWR 302
November 24, 2013
Word Count- 1250
Essay #5 Most professions or trades use language specific to that line of work. In the workplace of psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists, there is a specific language used in assessing, diagnosing, and treating clients and patients. I have come to be familiar with this as my mother is a therapist and we have talked about her work and diagnosing people with a variety of mental health disorders. The problem with such language and expressing that language in a book like the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) is that it can be used against people in a way that is not healing but harmful and something that very often too few people consider. This language is sometimes used to take very human and real and normal life situations, like bereavement and trauma and sadness and anxiety, and somehow attach a medical diagnosis to them. And, of course, if there is a medical diagnosis, than there must be an accompanying treatment or cure for a cost. According to Philip Hickey in his article entitled, “Behaviorism and Mental Health” (2011) in 1952, homosexuality was listed in the DSM as a sociopathic personality disturbance and according to the American Psychiatric Association homosexuality was a mental illness up until 1974. Neil Postman states in his essay The Word Weavers/The World Makers, “By naming an event and categorizing it as a “thing”, we create a vivid and more or less permanent map of what the world is like.” (853) That is what happened in the world of psychology and psychiatry regarding homosexual behavior. The American Psychiatric Association agreed that this “thing”, homosexuality, is an illness and we are
Page 1 attaching a name to it: sociopathic personality disorder. It suddenly becomes something very different by the use of those three words, something more frightening and more dangerous sounding according to Hickey (2011). The language of psychiatry,