Using Jargon as Cloak of ‘Expertise’ : ‘Stylized Non-Communication” in Medical, Other Fields
When you go to the doctor with a pain in your chest and she tells you you’re suffering from angina pectoris , she has told you, in Latin, that you have a pain in your chest. (Strictly speaking, angina referred specifically to quinsy--tonsillitis--so the doctor is really telling you that you have a sore throat in your chest. But we needn’t press that point.)
We are fortunate that modern medicine has reached such a state of development that its technical terms are usually meaningful and useful to medical practitioners even when they aren’t very informatice to the patients. The reassurance which we, as patients, derive from the doctors’ talk, too often has nothing to do with understanding.
Treating Mind, Body
The problem is even more acute in those practices which treat not just the body but the mind as well: psychiatry and psychology. Drs. Jack Mendelson and Nancy Mello, a psychiatrist and psychologist, respectively, comment on the problem in their excellent book, “Alcohol: Use and Abuse in America.”
Mendelson and Mello point out that some psychoanalysts have attempted to demonstrate the existence of an “alcoholic personality,” and to find the causes of later alcoholism in childhood experience. These analysts have often cast their explanations in terms of “unresolved Oedipal conflicts,” “faulty ego development,” “oral dependency,” and the like.
Mendelson and Mello comment: “The sonorous quality of these formulations imparts an authority almost independent of content. Labels and slogans, especially obscure ones, may convey an aura of knowledge that is useful in certain highly stylized, socially sanctioned forms of noncommunication.”
They not only diagnose the problem but also describe its etiology: “Assigning big words to important problems, perhaps with the hope that a really big word will reduce the size of the problem, is not malicious or deviant. When in doubt, most people would prefer to do (or say) something rather than just ponder the imponderable. The illusion of knowledge seems more comforting than the certainty of ignorance.”
All other things being equal, it’s better to be comfortable than not. But sometimes the illusion of knowledge can be dangerous. The jury that must decide the guilt or innocence of a defendant on the basis of conflicting expert testimony will find that ignorance is not bliss. The patient who must choose between two practitioners, or between two different disciplines of treatment, will find that labels and slogans provide temporary relief, at best.
Indeed, anyone who has to choose a doctor or a job or a religion or a new car will be hard pressed to distinguish real knowledge from the many “highly stylized, socially sanctioned forms of non-communication.”
I don’t think there is an easy answer to this problem. I can offer one practical hint, though. Real knowledge has limits. It is the mark of the charlatan or the enthusiast to try to make his key terms explain everything. The real scientist has the courage and clarity to say, “I don’t know.” Even if that’s not what we want to hear the doctor say, we should be grateful to hear it now and again, because it gives real value to what he does now.
