Clinomorphism

Clinomorphism (from the Greek term 'klinikos' meaning bed and 'morphos' meaning form) is the deliberate or unintentional simplification, alteration or amplification of the term for a medical condition (usually for dramatic effect) often in the form of a caricature to which sufferers of (or carers for those with) the condition often vehemently object.

Schizophrenia is clinomorphically simplified or caricatured as being a ‘split personality’, where the sufferer is depicted as having two different sets of behavioural mannerisms, between which they alternate unconsciously. These symptoms are in fact more likely to be associated with a condition which is medically recognised as multiple personality disorder. It can also be misrepresented as being characterised by experiencing only essentially visual hallucinations (such as in A Beautiful Mind), whereas in fact auditory hallucinations ('hearing voices') constitute a much more common syndrome.

Tourette's syndrome is typically clinomorphically depicted as being a condition where the sufferer is prone to involuntary (and often unconscious) outbursts of offensive language or behaviour, usually on account of being unable to repress (or unaware that they are articulating) their spontaneous responses to others.

The typical clinomorphism of Tourette's is both an oversimplification and a conflation of various different aspects and conditions pertaining to Tourette's.

In fact Tourette's syndrome does indeed have an incidence of a 'sub-syndrome' involving 'involuntary offensive speech' which is termed coprolalia (literally 'offensive babbling') and is sometimes clinomorphised into the term 'complusive swearing' or 'compulsive profanity', terms which have 'clinomorphic currency' outside the use of the term 'Tourette's'.

But coprolalia is in fact a rare symptom of Tourette's.

In fact 'involuntary offensive behaviour' (copropraxia ) and 'involuntary offensive writing or drawing' (coprographia ) are both additional typical clinomorphic conflations of Tourette's (although they are not in fact unknown symptoms of the condition) as well as being convenient excuses for misbehaviour, especially in schoolchildren.

Clinomorphism is in fact often both a contributory factor in as well as being the result of the mythology and 'popular misconception' of many medical conditions.

Clinomorphism is usually the basis for controversy in medical conditions such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (aka Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), ADHD, and Dyslexia where consensus is not easily established concerning the validity of the conditions and clinomorphism is in fact seen as pejorative, so that clinomorphic references to these conditions are ascribed respectively to being 'cowardice', 'malingering', 'disobedience' and 'stupidity'.

Clinomorphism, whilst being a linguistic 'behaviour' which exemplifies particular 'errors' and deliberate misrepresentations, may also be a 'natural tendency' in the sense that it is potentially an understandable consequence of the need to abbreviate or simply 'use as a metaphor' an otherwise difficult to describe idea, in much the same way as anthropomorphism might be (where we attribute the characteristics of a mind to inanimate objects, purely for ease of description of a particular phenomenon, rather than as a result of holding a genuinely animistic belief).

An example of 'clinomorphic tendency' would be in the case of Autism or Asperger's syndrome where particular characteristics of these syndromes (such as the limitations on the ability of a sufferer to form a mental model of the state of mind of another person) would be clinomorphically used as a metaphor or simile for someone's behaviour, where the individual being described clinomorphically is not in fact believed by the utterer to be a sufferer of the condition in question.

The danger is that this will be seen as an offensive misrepresentation of and disrespect towards the condition of an actual sufferer, and thus such clinomorphism (even as a metaphorical convenience) would need to be restricted to discreet private discourse, or (at the risk of encoraging political correctness) avoided altogether.