ABSTRACT
Jargon is the word used to describe the specialist vocabulary used by people working in a particular discipline or activity to describe technical aspects of their work. It is a sort of shorthand. Once we get into the realm of human behaviour and emotional experience the problem of jargon starts to get particularly complicated. For a start, there is the massive confusion and muddled thinking which is caused by the universal tendency to explain and treat everything in terms of the medical model. Science, with its medical hat on, does not recognise feelings or emotions as anything more than biochemical or neurological states which can be controlled or "managed" chemically or by other physical means. The acronym is essentially a major tool in jargon in the way that it enables one to refer to a complicated or specialised process or situation by simply taking the initial letters of the relevant descriptive phrase.
