Naming versus explaining
In many traditional cultures, ancient civilizations, and folklore traditions, a name is not viewed as a mere label, it is considered an intrinsic part of a person's soul, essence, or spiritual makeup.
Because the name represents the core of the being, possessing it was believed to allow a sorcerer, spirit, or enemy to manipulate, curse, or summon that person.
To protect themselves, many cultures practiced name avoidance. People often used nicknames, public titles, or ‘noa’ (ordinary/allowed) names in daily life while keeping their true or spiritual name hidden from strangers or enemies.
Muad'Dib was Paul Atreides's public name of manhood and the war name he used. Usul was his private tribal name. Rumpelstiltskin or tales of trolls and faery creatures centre on the premise that learning the entity's real name breaks their power over a mortal.
Molière mocked the doctor who said opium causes sleep because it has a “dormitive virtue.” Much psychiatric diagnosis has the same shape. A man hoards because he has hoarding disorder. How do we know he has it? Because he hoards. The label restates the behaviour and then poses as its cause.
The DSM, psychiatry’s diagnostic manual, defines most conditions by clusters of symptoms, not by any identified mechanism. In 2013 Thomas Insel, then director of America’s National Institute of Mental Health, said as much. He wrote that the manual’s categories lacked validity, and his institute began moving its research away from them.
The labels are not even reliable. In the DSM-5 field trials, two clinicians assessing the same patient often disagreed. Agreement on major depression was poor, and on generalized anxiety worse. Categories also come and go by committee. Homosexuality was a mental disorder until the American Psychiatric Association voted it out in 1973. Diseases discovered by ballot invite some skepticism.
Psychoanalysis fares worst of all. In 1952 Hans Eysenck reviewed the evidence and concluded that roughly two-thirds of neurotic patients improved within two years whether treated or not. Karl Popper’s objection went deeper. A theory that explains every possible outcome, including the patient’s denial as proof of repression, forbids nothing and therefore tells us nothing.
In 2015 a large collaboration tried to reproduce 100 published psychology studies. Only about a third produced significant results again. Famous findings on priming, power posing and willpower as a depletable resource have wilted under re-examination. Even the Stanford Prison Experiment now looks more like stage management than science.
Comparisons of rival therapies repeatedly find them roughly equal, the so-called ‘Dodo bird verdict’ (Everybody has won and all must have prizes). That suggests the active ingredients are a sympathetic listener, hope and time, not the elaborate theoretical machinery each school sells.
Labels can create what they describe. The philosopher Ian Hacking called this the ‘looping effect.’ People given a category start to fit it, and the category then appears confirmed.
Robert Ardrey wrote of "The spectacle of sociology, social psychology, and cultural anthropology, like three drunks around a lamp post, each trying to find his watch while looking where the light is rather than where the watch was lost."
They think they hold up the light of eternal truth, but in reality hold up nothing but each other.
If you are thinking of studying HSBC at Cambridge, my advice is please don’t.
Madsen Pirie