Reification

Definitions

Chaplin

1. Treating an abstract concept as if it were real.¹

English & English

1. Supposing, or acting as if one supposed, that an abstract quality has concrete actuality or existence; treating an abstract concept of construct as if it referred to a thing. The error is most insidious in psychology.²

Discussion

Once you understand what reification is and how it works, you begin to see it everywhere you look. As English & English point out, the discipline of psychology is almost 100% reification. This isn’t a problem in itself, because reification is actually an extremely helpful ability that facilitates highly nuanced understanding of complex subjects by allowing us to generalise abstract concepts, and then use those concepts to plan actions in the world.

Where it does become a particular problem, however, is in psychiatry and psychotherapy, where reification can have very real, and very negative effects on the people to whom these reifications are applied. I have written about this elsewhere, but the gist of the argument is that all psychiatric diagnoses are reifications which don’t bear any particular resemblance to reality. This leads people to misunderstand the nature of the emotions and psychological functions they are struggling with, thus making it more difficult for them to deal with them effectively.

For example, rather than being helpfully explanatory, the diagnosis of “schizophrenia” is usually experienced as a terrifying and stigmatising burden that the person carries for the rest of their life. This is also accompanied by the idea that because a diagnosis is for life, the only possible treatment options are powerful medications with strongly negative side-effects, or being locked up in a psych-ward or expensive private mental health facilities.

A less extreme example is anxiety. Anxiety is an abstract concept which refers to the unpleasant experience of perpetually worrying about things over which you have no control, and about which you usually have insufficient knowledge. Anxiety as a term is therefore an abstracted reification of worry, and is therefore a reification of a reification (the concept of Worry is also a reification).

This is why anxiety is so difficult to understand and get a handle on. Not because the feelings, sensations, and thoughts are particularly difficult to understand, but because when we think about our “anxiety,” we are disconnecting ourselves from the actual emotion we are experiencing. It pushes us up into our heads where the worry is free to simply spin, and spin, and spin. So the first step in dealing with so-called anxiety is to figure out what you’re worried about and see if there are concrete things you can do to make yourself feel less nervous about it.

We humans may be capable of abstract thought, but our physiology is concrete, and (generally speaking) our perceptions refer to real, concrete objects in a real, concrete world. This is why two of the most common recommendations for so called “anxiety disorders” (a reification of a reification of a reification) are deep breathing and yoga; they direct your attention towards real, concrete physiological processes that require no understanding and (more importantly) no abstract thought.

References