Issues

Filed Under March 2007, columns 

I hope it’s oatmeal. I have issues with oatmeal.

Dear Word Detective: A few years ago (very few, it seems to me) people started substituting the word “issue” for “problem.” People stopped having “problems” and suddenly had “issues” instead. This usage still sounds awkward and forced to me, even years later, and I wondered what you could tell me about how and why this got started. You’ve pointed out before that when enough people want to re-coin a word or retool its meaning, there’s not much we can do about it (e.g., your recent comments about “mute” points). But maybe we can at least find out the hows and the whys. I’m not conservative about most things (in fact, I’m quite liberal), but I resist this sort of alteration of traditional modes of saying commonplace things. I have issues with it. — Jerome Norris.

Yeah, that’s me. The Grinch who lets language-manglers off the hook. But that doesn’t mean I personally like all the changed usage and new coinages in the past few years. My job is just to offer up the data for you folks, and if you decide that it strikes you as ugly or silly, feel free to say so. I report, you deride. Personally, the one that really annoys me is “substance abuser,” which always, to me, conjures up a vision of a guy beating a large lump of some unidentified material with a baseball bat.

The use of “issues” as a stand-in for “problems” is a relatively recent development. A 2003 draft addition to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) pegs the earliest appearance of the term found thus far in print to 1982 in the New York Times (”Then it becomes how do you deal with the emotions and intimacy issues that were largely dealt with previously through alcohol?”). But I’d be amazed if this use of “issues” were not eventually discovered somewhat earlier, perhaps in the 1970s, in psychology books or journals.

As to the “why” of “issues” used in this sense, I think that it, like “substance abuse,” is primarily a therapeutic euphemism designed to soften the impact of reality and especially to dodge the question of culpability. If one were to ask a patient about, for instance, the “problem” he has talking to his father, the patient might well respond angrily that the “problem” lies with his father. Better to neutralize that stumbling block with the blame-free “issue.”

The percolation of “issues” in this sense into daily life is certainly annoying, but I think there may be a natural limiting factor to its spread. It’s difficult to imagine news reports referring to the US government “having issues” with avian flu, for instance.

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Comments

3 Responses to “Issues”

  1. Vicky on March 9th, 2007 4:43 pm

    Oh, no! Now I have to take issue with a Word Detective answer; I is covered with rue (to quote Pogo.). While I bow to your knowledge of words and language, your expertise in therapeutics and specifically therapeutics related to addiction is, well, lacking. I’ve been in the field of addiction treatment for 30 years and watched the language change. “Substance abuse” is a compromise. Once upon a time we sorted the addicted population into groups, according to the substance used, so we had alcoholics and narcotics addicts, for example, and we viewed and treated them differently socially, therapeutically and legally. Over time, we learned that their similarities were much stronger than their differences, and that what was beneficial to one group was equally beneficial to the other. So we coined “substance abuser” not to negate responsibility, but to emphasize commonality. Also, “issue” does not equate with “problem”. To issue is to emerge, and that is closer in meaning than “problem” in the therapeutic context. An issue is some situation, feeling, or circumstance that is “emerging” in the consciousness of the client, and that may or may not require therapeutic intervention or direction. We often use the word “problem” too, and neither “issue” nor “problem” inherently assigns responsibility to anyone. The word we use for that is “responsibility”, and it is a frequent consideration in substance abuse treatment, since, until the individual accepts responsibility for his/her addiction and related behavior, no recovery can occur.

    I love your column and respect most of what you say, but you dropped the ball on this one, and lapsed into the cant of popular conservatism and the uninformed view that clinical intervention somehow excuses or condones or trivializes a socially destructive, economically disastrous, and personally fatal condition. .

    Every occupation has its own jargon, and sometimes that jargon is picked up by the nonprofessional and used in contexts and with intent different than its originators imagine. When that happens, the definition of the popular usage can be explained however you please. In this response, though, you purport to explain professional jargon out of its context. You know not of what you speak, and thus offend.

  2. Ellen on March 22nd, 2007 11:11 am

    Perhaps Vicky’s issue is she needs to lighten up!

  3. Vicky on March 22nd, 2007 3:56 pm

    Hey, Ellen! Greetings! I haven’t been here in ages and show up to find someone read my little comment jsut today. What a surprise. Actually, my “issue” is emerging weariness with the whole idea that therapy is somehow letting people off the hook. Those who think this is the case should try it!

    I like a laugh as much as the next person, but I also think that people who need therapy could be put off by hearing it disparaged. If one guy continues to drive drunk who could have been stopped by a good course of reality based therapy, then every person he jeopardizes is in harm’s way. If he eschews therapy because of the “it’s just letting people off the hook” or “it’s for the weak-willed” or any of the other stupidity the uninformed-but-opinionated promulgate, then the uninformed-but-opinionated share in the harm that gets done. If you don’t know what you are talking about, you are wise to keep shut.

    Actually, on the issue of laypersons mis-using professional jargon, I could just as easily have cited “paradigm shift”, which gets used to mean “he changed his mind”. I just don’t care as much about paradigm shift as I do about people having wrong ideas about therapy.

    May you and yours never suffer from the effects of untreated substance abuse.

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