Label Busting

Some therapists focus on dispelling labelling, because they believe that self-identification is something which has been negatively socially conditioned or imposed upon individuals, through things like abuse, domestic violence, and psychiatric oppression, and that those things become internalised through negative self-identification. By labels, a therapist may mean diagnostic terms like "schizophrenia" and "psychotic", and not symptomatic terms such as "anxious" or "depressed", but which may still be negative labels about our perceptions and experiences, if the therapist is saying that we are misperceiving psychologically damaging treatment as simply poor judgment.

It's a good thing to dispel labelling, in order to regard people as changing and evolving individuals, but if label-busting doesn't make a discrepancy between negative and positive labelling, then it is just a negative enterprise, and which in itself may be negatively labelling the client in supposedly neutral terms. One reason for some therapists opposing all labelling, including positive labelling, is that the therapist wants territorial control over the whole labelling processes, and in terms of the client's intellectual and emotional responses.

If people have had very bad experiences of things like abuse, domestic violence, and psychiatric oppression, then obviously the experiences of those things are not positive, but are very negative experiences, whilst the therapy may be positive in its treatment of the person. If a person is suffering or injured, then we have to in some ways label the person's state of mind or well-being, in order to treat or care for the person, or else we wouldn't be concerned with them at all. This is about care or treatment, and not necessarily about coercion. Labelling therefore has an emotional dimension, and enables us to gauge human suffering, in order to care for or treat a person or group within society. This is a human area, and which is not necessarily confined to psychotherapy or mental health.

For example, if a person were to fall off her or his bicycle, and graze their elbow, we would be labelling them by saying that the person is hurt and in need of a plaster, but this would be a positive use of labelling, because it would be a positive response to a physical problem, in much the same way that a positive emotional response may be applied to mental health.

Any term might be considered as a label, and we might need a basic understanding of linguistics to know about the different types of labelling that exist, because on a much wider scale, all words and terms are labels, including descriptions of human beings. I'm not attempting to go into this now, but a basic understanding of linguistics is important, as language or the use of language, often underlies or interrelates with labelling processes, behaviours, and responses.

Opposing all labelling, may not distinguish between positive self-labelling which opposes negative social conditioning, and positive labelling, which is about individuals asserting themselves against the negative labelling which has been misappropriated onto individuals through things like abuse and domestic violence. Too much individualising of negative and positive labelling, might also omit the social dimension of labelling, and how this operates within society at large, and within psychotherapy and mental health.

Some therapists attempts at label-busting, might label a person with even bigger labels, or with much more subtler and insidious ones, and we can't always believe a therapist when they say that they are just going for busting the bigger or huge labels, because there's a distinction between diagnosis and symptoms in terms of labelling. For example, a label like "schizophrenia" is a diagnosis, and would constitute a big label, whereas a symptom like "anxious" or "depressed", would amount to a symptom, but both may be a form of labelling, if it is only focusing on negative terms within actual therapeutic treatment.

There's also a distinction between a label which denominates a person from a group, and a stereotype which demonstrates a person with a derogatory group characteristic. In this way, what may appear to be an individual label or labelling process, may actually be a denomination of a negative or positive group characteristic, and what may appear to be social labelling, via social conditioning, may just be a case of individual labelling, perhaps operating at a more interpersonal level. It is this area which is most beneficial to any counselling or psychotherapy, which seeks to focus on label-busting in terms of a refined but non-stereotypical enterprise and therapeutic practice, and to create a positive social and self-image of the client.