Semantic Distortions

In this week’s spotlight I wish to discuss semantic distortions, how word meanings are distorted by our beliefs and emotions. Our world, to use the words of Alfred Korzybski, has now become, perhaps more often than any sane person would like to admit, false to fact and therefore necessarily distorted. It is precisely the mechanism of semantic distortions that underlies thinking processes that are or become neurotic or psychotic. It is also this same mechanism that gives rise to self-sabotaging behavior and self-limiting beliefs. This very same mechanism—and mechanism is a good word because the process becomes so automatic that ...