Generative AI Meets Psychobabble

I would guess that you must be.

We all seem to know that psychobabble consists of assorted chatter that mixes various psychological terminology and often ends up being either incomprehensible or completely nonsensical. All you need to do to spew forth psychobabble is rattle off a bunch of fancy terms and string them together as though they have some important meaning. It’s magical.

Part of the problem with psychobabble is that you might not know whether the person saying such verbiage is sincere or pulling your leg. There is a chance that the person honestly believes that they have strung together a coherent and keenly insightful remark or thought. They are being heartfelt.

Psychobabble is still psychobabble.

Whether a person intended the commentary to be straight ahead and informative, it fails if the mishmash makes no sense and is purely verbal garbage.

I want to add a twist to the matter at hand.

Let’s introduce generative AI into this realm.

If we make use of generative AI, there are numerous possibilities of coping with or perhaps toying with psychobabble. I will be sharing with you those possibilities, including using contemporary generative AI such as ChatGPT to illustrate and illuminate the nuances of psychobabble.

Prepare yourself for a memorable and informative ride.

For my ongoing readers and new readers, this thought-provoking discussion continues my in-depth series about the impact of generative AI in the health and medical realm. The focus this time is once again on the mental health domain and examines the use of generative AI to examine, assess, detect, and sometimes even create psychobabble.

Previously, I have examined numerous interleaving facets of generative AI and mental health, see my comprehensive overview at the link here. You might also find of notable interest a CBS 60 Minutes episode that recently examined crucial facets of this evolving topic, see the link here (I am honored and pleased to indicate that I was featured in the episode, see the link here).

Other vital postings in my column include in-depth coverage of mental health chatbots which have been bolstered by generative AI (see the link here) and the rapidly changing nature of the client-therapist relationship due to generative AI at the link here. I explored where things are headed regarding the levels of AI-based mental therapy autonomous guidance at the link here, and showcased the importance of the World Health Organization (WHO) report on global health and generative AI at the link here, and so on.

On with the show.

Essentials Of Psychobabble

I will first cover some essential research about psychobabble and aid in revealing what the brouhaha is all about.

In a research article entitled “Psychobabble: Why Do We Do It?” by Maria Della Corte, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, And Practice, Fall 1980, these salient points were made (excerpts):

• “Many expressions originating in contemporary, ‘instant’ therapies have become incorporated into everyday speech. “
• “These expressions, otherwise known as ‘psychobabble,’ convey connotative meanings rather than precise, denotative ones.”
• “Rosen has coined the term ‘psychobabble’ to refer to such utterances. He proposes that new forms of "instant" therapy are responsible for these expressions infiltrating our speech.”
• “Perhaps the next time you hear yourself babble you will know that it serves multiple functions, to make you look good and feel good, but has no redeeming value for your listener, particularly if s/ he is a client.”

Note that this article was published in 1980, which was just a few years after the term psychobabble was originally coined. The notion of psychobabble was somewhat new at the time.

Since then, we’ve been inundated with the term psychobabble. It is a common phrase and comes up readily.

The considered originator of psychobabble wording was Richard D. Rosen and he brought the world this new term in his book entitled “Psychobabble: Fast Talk and Quick Cure in the Era of Feeling” by R.D. Rosen, Atheneum, 1977.

Here are some key points from his book (excerpts):

• “Psychobabble represents the rejection of narration in favor of psychological ad copy.”
• “Their jargon seems to free-float in an all-purpose linguistic atmosphere, a set of repetitive verbal formalities that kills off the very spontaneity, candor, and understanding it pretends to promote. It’s an idiom that reduces psychological insight to a collection of standardized observations, that provide a frozen lexicon to deal with an infinite variety of problems.”
• “Psychobabble does not refer simply to certain modes of expression, but to a social mood as well — a verbal anxiety, a certain sort of disposition to talk about oneself, a way of thinking.”
• “True psychobabble has all the intimacy of two PDP-8 computer terminals conversing in an Artificial Intelligence lab, and all in the name of interpersonal relations.”

As mentioned in those points, the crux is to string together jargon from the psychology field and do so in a manner that reads like traditional ad copy.

There’s something in that last bullet that I’d like to highlight. I selected purposely a quote from his writing that pertained to AI. For those of you interested in the history of computers, you might recognize that the referred to PDP-8 was a popular mini-computer during that era. For my coverage of the history of AI and what AI was like in that era, along with the ties generally between the field of psychology and the field of AI, see the link here.

We will return to the notion of AI conversing with itself, doing so in my concluding remarks.

A rather serious use of the word psychobabble comes into play in the legal field. When an expert witness is testifying about the psychological facets of a defendant, a lawyer might try to challenge the expert by claiming they are spouting psychobabble. It is a means of diminishing the testimony in the eyes of the jury.

In a research paper entitled “Hired Guns,” “Charlatans,” and Their “Voodoo Psychobabble”: Case Law References to Various Forms of Perceived Bias Among Mental Health Expert Witnesses” by John F. Edens, Shannon Toney Smith, Melissa S. Magyar, Kacy Mullen, Amy Pitta, and John Petrila, Psychological Services, 2012, these points were made (excerpts):

• “Although in principle the legal system expects and professional ethics demand that expert witnesses be unbiased and objective in their forensic evaluations, anecdotal evidence suggests that accusations of financial bias, partisanship, and other forms of nonobjectivity are common.”
• “Allegations most typically involved describing the expert as having an opinion that was ‘for sale,’ or as a partisan or advocate for one side, although aspersions also were made concerning ‘junk science’ testimony and comparing mental health experts to mystics and sorcerers.”
• “Consider the following strategy recommended in response to mental health evaluations in child custody cases: Once the report comes out in your client’s favor all you have to do is convince the court that this evaluator is truly an expert whose recommendations must be followed or the well-being of the client will be imperiled. Then again, if the evaluation is against your client, it is all psychobabble, erroneous data, and dangerous conclusions and clearly the court should not abdicate its responsibility to do what is right for the children because of the temptation to follow the specific recommendations of this charlatan.”

This research brings rise to an intriguing element of psychobabble.

We ought to consider these two major circumstances:

• (1) Truly Psychobabble. A true accusation of psychobabble, namely, asserting that a passage is psychobabble, and it is psychobabble.
• (2) Not Psychobabble. A false accusation of psychobabble. Asserting that a passage is a psychobabble, but it is not a psychobabble.

Envision how those circumstances can happen. A lawyer accuses an expert witness of employing psychobabble. Is the accusation apt? Well, maybe yes, maybe no. The lawyer might be tricky and aim to undermine the expert witness by claiming that they have said psychobabble, even though they haven’t.

Just because someone asserts that a passage is psychobabble does not make it so.

Moving on, there are mental health ramifications associated with psychobabble.

In a research paper entitled “Do Psychology Students Believe Mental Health Myths More Than Medical Students?” by Gabriel Andrade, Dalia Bedewy, and Eid G. Abo Hamza, Society for the Teaching of Psychology, September 2023, these points were made (excerpts):

• “Pop psychology and so-called ‘psychobabble’ have become an issue of concern amongst educators, especially in the higher levels of learning.
• “Media often magnify many misconceptions about the workings of human behavior and consequently, psychology myths are hard to eradicate.”
• “Psychologists have long been aware of these difficulties, and much work has been done on educating the general public to create greater awareness of mental health misconceptions.”
• “This is especially worrying in the field of mental health, as misconceptions can lead to ineffective treatment of various conditions.”
• “Mental health awareness is still not fully adequate throughout the world, and much work needs to be done in order to increase it.”

I will connect the mental health implications to the point about psychobabble being used in a true versus false manner.

Things go like this.

The public at large must contend with psychobabble that appears on TV, in films, on social media, and the like. They might not realize that they are encountering psychobabble. Sometimes, such content might be portrayed as being valid psychological science versus non-sensical psychobabble.

Problematically, the public might fall for psychobabble and believe that it is sensible and actionable. People could unfortunately embrace psychobabble and proceed to undertake mental health practices that have no sound basis.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that generative AI can potentially help people sift through and figure out if something is likely to be psychobabble.

Let’s see how that works.

Generative AI Meets With Psychobabble

Now that I’ve taken you through the fundamentals of psychobabble, we are ready to shift into AI mode.

Perhaps you’ve used a generative AI app, such as the popular ones of ChatGPT, GPT-4o, Gemini, Bard, Claude, etc. The crux is that generative AI can take input from your text-entered prompts and produce or generate a response that seems quite fluent. This is a vast overturning of the old-time natural language processing (NLP) that used to be stilted and awkward to use, which has been shifted into a new version of NLP fluency of an at times startling or amazing caliber.

The customary means of achieving modern generative AI involves using a large language model or LLM as the key underpinning.

In brief, a computer-based model of human language is established that in the large has a large-scale data structure and does massive-scale pattern-matching via a large volume of data used for initial data training. The data is typically found by extensively scanning the Internet for lots and lots of essays, blogs, poems, narratives, and the like. The mathematical and computational pattern-matching homes in on how humans write, and then henceforth generates responses to posed questions by leveraging those identified patterns. It is said to be mimicking the writing of humans.

I think that is sufficient for the moment as a quickie backgrounder. Take a look at my extensive coverage of the technical underpinnings of generative AI and LLMs at the link here and the link here, just to name a few.

Back to the crux of things.

I had mentioned that we could use generative AI to ferret out whether a passage consists of psychobabble.

Actually, there are many useful uses of generative AI regarding psychobabble:

• (1) Make psychobabble. Use generative AI to compose psychobabble.
• (2) Break psychobabble. Use generative AI to analyze potential psychobabble and determine if the material is psychobabble.
• (3) Explain psychobabble. Use generative AI to explain a psychobabble passage.
• (4) Translate psychobabble. Use generative AI to translate psychobabble into something sensible, if possible.
• (5) Summarize psychobabble. Use generative AI to summarize a psychobabble passage.
• (6) Mimic psychobabble. Use generative AI to mimic a passage of psychobabble and produce more psychobabble based on that psychobabble.
• (7) Reuse psychobabble. Use generative AI to read a psychobabble passage and reuse it in some other composition.
• (8) Modify psychobabble. Use generative AI to modify psychobabble, either making it into even more psychobabble or potentially reducing the level of psychobabble.
• (9) Magnify psychobabble. Use generative AI to magnify psychobabble, such as taking some psychobabble and extending it in various ways.
• (10) Other. Use generative AI in other ways for dealing with psychobabble.

Those are notable ways to intertwine generative AI and psychobabble.

I’m sure you are wondering what it looks like to use generative AI in this realm. It’s great that you are interested since that’s what I am going to show you next.

Read on.

Showcasing The Use Of Generative AI

I will next proceed to examine further the use of generative AI in this context.

This will consist of a series of dialogues with ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a logical choice in this case due to its immense popularity as a generative AI app. As noted, an estimated four hundred million weekly active users are said to be utilizing ChatGPT. That’s a lot of people and a lot of generative AI usage underway.

I will ask a foundational question.

• My entered prompt: “What is psychobabble?”
• ChatGPT generated response: “Psychobabble refers to the use of psychological jargon, concepts, or terms in a way that sounds authoritative or insightful but is actually vague, superficial, or misleading. It often involves using complex psychological language to describe simple ideas, or it may present psychological concepts without a clear understanding of their true meaning. Psychobabble is sometimes used to give an impression of expertise or to make ideas seem more profound than they are. However, it can also confuse or mislead people, as it lacks the substance or accuracy that would be present in genuine psychological discussion.”

You likely observe that ChatGPT is familiar with the topic.

This is a good sign for this discussion. If ChatGPT had not previously encountered data training on a topic at hand, there would be less utility in using the AI. The AI would have to be further data trained, such as the use of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), as I discuss at the link here.

Let’s jump into the important matter

I will ask ChatGPT to generate an example of psychobabble. We can then assess whether the produced psychobabble seems to indeed be psychobabble. It is possible that ChatGPT won’t be able to sufficiently craft psychobabble or otherwise fail at the task.

Here we go.

• My entered prompt: “Create an example of psychobabble so I can see what it looks like.”
• ChatGPT generated response: “Here's an example of psychobabble: In order to achieve a holistic paradigm shift in your psycho-emotional landscape, you must first realign your subconscious vibrational frequencies with the universal energy matrix. This realignment will catalyze the transmutation of negative thought patterns into a higher state of cognitive resonance, thereby enabling the manifestation of your innermost desires through the law of quantum attraction."
• My entered prompt: “Why was that example psychobabble?”
• ChatGPT generated response: “Because the passage sounds complex and profound, but it’s essentially meaningless and lacks clear, practical advice. It's full of jargon without any real substance or explanation.”

What do you think of the produced psychobabble?

For me, it does seem like psychobabble. There are lots of catchy terms such as “holistic” and “vibrational frequencies” which constitute the use of psychological phrases. Taken as a whole, the passage doesn’t seem to make any notable sense.

I assume you likely have a similar opinion of the passage.

Turning Around Psychobabble

Maybe we can get ChatGPT to convert the passage into something useful.

Let’s try.

• My entered prompt: “Show me an example of converting psychobabble into something potentially useful.”
• ChatGPT generated response:

“Psychobabble can often be distilled into more straightforward, meaningful language. Here's how you might convert the previous psychobabble example into something useful.”

“Psychobabble: In order to achieve a holistic paradigm shift in your psycho-emotional landscape, you must first realign your subconscious vibrational frequencies with the universal energy matrix. This realignment will catalyze the transmutation of negative thought patterns into a higher state of cognitive resonance, thereby enabling the manifestation of your innermost desires through the law of quantum attraction."

“Useful Translation: To improve your emotional well-being, focus on changing negative thoughts into positive ones. By doing this consistently, you'll start to feel better and be more in tune with what you really want in life."

“This translation cuts out the unnecessary jargon and offers clear, actionable advice that’s easy to understand.”

End of ChatGPT response

I like the translation in the sense that the translated version does make sense.

You might argue that the translation is a bit afield of the original psychobabble. I am okay with the reaching aspect. It can be hard to take mush and turn it into crystal-clear water.

Gaining More Depth In This Case

We are off to a great start and ChatGPT is being helpful in revealing the ways that psychobabble can be interpreted and transformed.

My next ploy will be to have generative AI take a proper psychological passage and convert it into psychobabble. There are various ways to proceed. For example, I could feed in a passage from a psychology journal, but I opted to take the lazy approach and ask ChatGPT to come up with an intelligible passage to be converted or translated.

Get yourself ready for the pizzazz.

• My entered prompt: “Show an example of taking something that is psychologically sound and turning it into psychobabble.”
• ChatGPT generated response:

“Certainly! Here's an example of taking a sound psychological concept and turning it into psychobabble.”

“Original Psychological Concept: To manage stress effectively, it's important to identify your stressors and develop coping strategies, such as regular exercise, deep breathing techniques, and setting realistic goals. These practices can help you maintain a balanced and healthy mindset."

“Converted to Psychobabble: In order to optimize your mental homeostasis, it's crucial to engage in a multi-layered diagnostic approach to pinpoint psychosocial stress catalysts. Subsequently, you should implement a synergistic suite of neurophysiological interventions, including kinetic engagement, diaphragmatic respiration modulation, and temporal goal recalibration. These integrative methodologies will facilitate the stabilization of your cognitive equilibrium."

“In this example, the original advice is practical and easy to understand, while the psychobabble version unnecessarily complicates the concepts with jargon and vague language.”

End of ChatGPT response

Did you enjoy the psychobabble?

It was certainly entertaining.

That being said, and if one wanted to be smarmy or a cynic, you might readily claim that there are research studies in psychology that sound exactly like the psychobabble produced in this example.

I have an idea for you. Find some serious and highly academic content that purports to be research in psychology and feed it into a generative AI app. Tell the generative AI to translate the material into psychobabble. If the result is about the same as the source content, you’ve maybe caught them going the psychobabble route.

Boom, drop the mic.

Psychobabble Conversations

My last example here will consist of two people conversing while using psychobabble. I will ask ChatGPT to make an example from scratch.

This is what happened.

• My entered prompt: “Show a dialogue between two people who are each using psychobabble when chatting with each other.”
• ChatGPT generated response:

“Here's a dialogue between two people, Alex and Jamie, who are both using psychobabble.”

“Alex: I've been working on enhancing my personal vibrational frequency by aligning my inner chakra energy with the cosmic resonance field. It's really helping me transcend my lower vibrational thought patterns."

“Jamie: That sounds amazing! I've been focusing on activating my quantum consciousness to better attune my mental frequencies with the universal energy grid. It's incredible how it elevates your psycho-spiritual resonance to a higher plane of existence."

“Alex: Exactly! I also started integrating a holistic approach to my neurocognitive alignment by synchronizing my auric field with the harmonic vibrations of the Earth’s magnetic frequency. It's like I'm manifesting a higher level of existential awareness."

“Jamie: Totally! I've been doing something similar by recalibrating my bio-energetic channels to optimize my metaphysical connectivity. It's opened up my third eye to the infinite potential of the quantum realm."

“This dialogue is full of grand-sounding but unclear and jargon-heavy statements, making it difficult to understand what either person is really saying.”

End of ChatGPT response

That resembles a dialogue you might see in a TV show or a movie.

The dialogue almost seems believable. Once you give it close scrutiny, you realize it is a jumble of mush.

Being On The Watch For Psychobabble

Congratulations, you are now versed in the wonderful world of psychobabble. Plus, you are up-to-speed on how generative AI intertwines with the topic.

The beauty of knowing about generative AI and psychobabble is that you can use AI to aid you with psychobabble situations. Lots of possibilities exist. I’ll help by brainstorming a few.

Suppose that someone posts a message on social media and claims they have the greatest psychological solution of all time. The content might seem unreadable due to being crammed with techno-psych terminology. You can use generative AI to examine the material and render a verdict of whether it is sensible or psychobabble.

Of course, if you are the kind of person who relishes posting such material, you might do this in reverse. Merely tell generative AI to produce psychobabble for you and then proceed to post it online. I am certainly not advocating that approach. We already have enough junk on the Internet, please don’t add more to it.

I did a quick experiment you might enjoy.

Just like I showed an example of presumably two people speaking psychobabble to each other, we can do the same with AI. I went ahead and had ChatGPT produce psychobabble, and I fed the passage into Claude, which is another generative AI app. Claude detected that it was psychobabble. I told Claude to respond with psychobabble in kind. I did this a couple of times. Fun.

I’ll finish this discussion with a quote and a final thought.

Abraham Lincoln famously reportedly said this: "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

We can be thankful for generative AI as our means of preventing being entirely fooled by psychobabble. On the other hand, since generative AI can be used to produce psychobabble, maybe we will be eternally in a bind or cat-and-mouse game of generating and discerning psychobabble.

Let’s hope it is a fingers-crossed truism that all the people cannot be fooled all the time.

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