Linguistic Creativity

Most of the word coinages, hybrid words, and novel expressions in this section were uttered without any client awareness that their vocalizations were quick-witted or clever. Call it, then, the unmediated brilliance of the subconscious. Their ingenious neologisms included such unheralded additions to our lexicon as "headroad," "revelationary," "compliable," "lifewise," "whelmed," "decommiting," "standmate," "glim," "flauntly," "screamathon"--and (ahem) "shituation," a fresh, R-rated version of the familiar word that singularly describes a really bad circumstance. Read More

The Idiomatic Screw-Up

Here we have expressions whose particular meanings generally can't be inferred from the individual words making them up--like "take the floor," "a chip on his shoulder," "an arm and a leg," "excuse my French," or a "cock and bull story" (oops! there's that word again--and I won't even touch the word "bull"!). Because, literally, idioms make precious little sense if someone bungles even a single word, committing such an error is likely to make the end result sound ridiculous. . . . Read More

Most Memorable Freudian Slips

Earlier, I mentioned that most of the amusing verbalizations I've encountered over the years were not, strictly speaking, Freudian slips. That is, they didn't necessarily unveil a client's repressed thoughts or emotion. Rather, they were "bloopers"--unintentionally ludicrous mistakes: such as an obese client's saying, "I don't want to picnic over this [vs. nitpick]." Or unusually descriptive coinages, like the client who described a vociferous shouting match with her husband as a "screamathon." . . . Read More

If you feel shameful—or have what’s called a “shame-based identity”—you believe that your very essence is dishonorable, even disgraceful. And frankly, I can think of almost nothing more painful than to go through life harboring such censorious thoughts about oneself. So answering the question posed in the above title should be a no-brainer. Better shameless than shameful, right? . . . Read More