Language of deficit

After listing 22 descriptive terms for the self (including stressed, self-alienated, paranoid, bulimic), Kenneth Gergen notes that “they are all terms of mental deficit. They discredit the individual, drawing attention to problems, shortcomings, or incapacities. To put it more broadly, the vocabulary of human deficit has undergone enormous expansion within the present century [he’s writing in 1991]. We have countless ways of locating faults within ourselves and others that were unavailable to even our great-grandfathers.”

This inflation of the vocabulary of psychic deficit not only reflecting the “‘scientizing’ of human behaviour,” but, as the language spreads throughout the culture, helps to shape people’s self-conceptions, which in turn leads to dependence on professionals for curse. Gergen quotes an ad for a conference on addiction, which promises to cover addictions to exercise, religion, eating, work, and sex. Gergen sardonically comments: “A century ago people could engage in all these activities without questioning their mental and emotional stability. If immersions in exercise, religion, eating, work, and sex are questionable today, what will be left untouched tomorrow?” Concerns about addiction to the multiplication of addictions is sure to follow.