It’s apparent that we can’t proceed any further without a name for this institutionalized garrulousness, this psychological patter, this need to catalogue the ego’s condition. Let’s call it psychobabble, this spirit which now tyrannizes conversation in the seventies.
ATTRIBUTION:
Richard Dean Rosen (b. 1949), U.S. journalist, critic. “Psychobabble,” Psychobabble: Fast Talk and Quick Cure in the Era of Feeling (1977).
Rosen added, “Psychobabble is difficult to avoid and there is often an embarrassment involved in not using it, somewhat akin to the mild humiliation experienced by American tourists in Paris who cannot speak the native tongue. Psychobabble is now spoken by magazine editors, management consultants, sandal makers, tool and die workers, chiefs of state, Ph.D.s in clinical psychology, and just about everyone else.”
