Sunday, January 26, 2014

''What is my name?'' ~ The Rumpelstiltskin Phenomenon

''Look at the head on that'', she thought.
''It looked as if he slept face down in a
box of pineapples''

This is the tendency for the naming of something to create an impression of imparting an understanding of it.
 
 
It applies, for example, to the naming of mental disorders: a person who tells implausible lies may be said to be suffering from pseudologia fantastica, but that term is nothing more than a name for implausible lying, and any impression that it imparts an understanding of the phenomenon is a cognitive illusion.
 
 
The phenomenon is named after Rumpelstiltskin. In a famous fairy tale called 'Rumpelstilzchen' in the German version collected by the brothers Grimm, a strange dwarf exerts a baleful influence over a miller's daughter until she eventually gains power over him by learning his name.
                                                                                                                                              (Colman, 2009)

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