Throughout years of experience in my practice and beyond it I’ve often confronted a fog of ambiguity present in the discourse among colleagues and non-professionals alike, all intent on communicating their understanding of some key aspect of the human psychological experience.
Certain words in particular seem to find their way to the forefront of generalities woven into the vocabulary of clinical discussion and writing, and public conversation as well. For the most part, these terms are quite naturally presumed to uphold some consensual understanding; that is, they are invoked as if to convey some specific, shared comprehension among all participants. However, some closer observation reveals – as much from the context in which they appear, as in the way they are elaborated – that certain key words often serve as mere rhetorical “place holders.” Frequently there is little to impart any measure of specificity to them; thereby the connotation they convey is often vague and inconsistent.
Here is a short list – far from complete – of some of these common “place-holder” words. They are among a multitude that most often fall victim to a fascinating, widespread and frustrating phenomenon of extreme generality, which I call, “word casualties:”
Self – Ego – Anxiety – Depression – Shame – Narcissism – Neurosis – Character – Personality – Compulsion – Addiction
Just ask any number of intelligent, well-educated, well-intentioned individuals, all of whom presumed fluent in this terminology, to define any one of these words, and you are likely to receive a multiplicity of responses that share a bare minimum of common ground.
The essays I’ve posted on my website, among them on the Self and on Compulsion And Addiction, are primarily my attempt at specificity and disambiguation; they are my own response to these deceptively simple questions:
Just what does one mean when one speaks of “the Self?”; of “Ego?”; of “anxiety?”; of “depression?’; of “shame?”; of “narcissism?”; of “neurosis?”; of “compulsion?”; of “addiction?”
My writing elaborates on these weighty terms primarily to consolidate my ideas related to them, and to provide some measure of greater cohesion and clarity to my own thinking. While I do this for my own benefit, I do hope that I may provide something meaningful and useful to you, my curious and intrepid reader. In all, my intent in adding my voice to these topics is not to impart the sense of its being in any way authoritative. I fully recognize the primacy of subjectivity within both speaker and listener engaged in discourse in my field; in particular, that the inevitable gap between the use of certain words and their inferred meaning is especially idiosyncratic, fluid and inherently problematic.
The essays that follow from these intentions are merely an addition of some “idea coordinates” to an already vast intellectual map drawn by a multitude of formidable contributors, past and present. The concepts I expound upon in the writing on my site reflect my very own, idiosyncratic integration and synthesis of what I have absorbed from the knowledge and wisdom of others whom I have had the great fortune to encounter.
Marc D. Spetalnik
