On the Use of Clinical Terms in Social Theory

Marta Russell ap888 at lafn.org
Mon Feb 7 08:04:36 PST 2000


JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:


> If I say that David Irving, the holocaust denying historian of Nazi Germany, is a psycho or a psychopath, anyone who gets upset on behalf of the mentally ill is missing the point. I am not insulting the mentally ill, least of all by using a term which I am now told doesn't actually apply to any mentally ill persons any more.

I disagree. You are using the term in a pejorative fashion when you disagree with his views. You don't know that he is "psychotic," you may know that he is wrong. To plug in a mental state is particularly inappropriate even if the term psychotic still had meaning.

Marta



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