One of the things that can put me in a really bad mood is too much psychological jargon. I find it tedious and pretentious. Yet it can be found in psychology in abundance.<\/p>\n
Part of the reason is that psychology is a \u201csoft science\u201d (as opposed to \u201chard medical science\u201d). Psychology as a field has long been uncomfortable by this fact and has longed to be taken seriously by the medical community and as a consequence has made various attempts to make psychology sound more scientific. One way has been to make our communication more convoluted, by using scientific-sounding terms, and employing long sentences that end with multiple quoted references. An unfortunately side-effect of this communication style is that it breaks up any fluid and coherent reading.<\/p>\n
Most psychological journals are written in exactly such style and during my training I, of course, had to read a large number (and even to write a few) of such journal articles. They are rarely inspiring reading. I overdosed on these articles to such a degree that since I\u2019ve graduated I\u2019ve been hard pressed to read one. The librarian at the mental health library where I regularly pick up books these days, keeps asking me why I hardly ever ask for a journal article since I so clearly love reading psychology stuff. \u201cI\u2019ll read one when they figure out a way to write an article that\u2019s fun to read,\u201d<\/em> I tell her.<\/p>\n What puzzles me about this phenomenon is that I don\u2019t see the need for it. I think that psychology is fascinating and complicated enough without us trying to dress it up in fancy jargon. I\u2019m often interested in what the journal articles are discussing but I have a busy life (who\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0these days?) and I don\u2019t have time to read things that are written in an un-necessarily complicated way.<\/p>\n So you can imagine that I felt like cheering when I came across George Orwell\u2019s five rules of effective writing: avoid clich\u00e9, never use long words when short ones will do, use as few words as possible, never use the passive where you can use the active, and avoid jargon<\/em>.<\/p>\n Maybe someone should alert the schools of psychology\u2026<\/p>\n Okay, rant over. \ud83d\ude42 But I can assure you that all the books that I have listed in the Book section (because it doesn\u2019t just happen to journal articles but also, unfortunately, to psychology books) are reader-friendly. That\u2019s why I\u2019ve recommended them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the things that can put me in a really bad mood is too much psychological jargon. I find it tedious and pretentious. Yet it can be found in psychology in abundance. Part of the reason is that psychology … Continue reading