[Ads-l] multiphrenia, -phrenic

[Jonathan Lighter]

Not in OED. 2,500 hits in Google Books.

Wiktionary: " The condition, largely attributed to technologies that
increase social contact, of being simultaneously drawn in multiple and
conflicting directions."

Coined by Kenneth J. Gergen in _The Saturated Self_ (1991).

Walter Truett Anderson, ed, _The Truth about Truth_ (N.Y.: Tarcher/Putnam,
1995) p. 9:

"Psychologists such as Kenneth Gergen...say the postmodern individual is a
member of many communities and networks, a participant in many discourses,
an audience to messages from everybody and everywhere - messages that
present different ideals and norms and images of the world.  Gergen
believes that this condition (he calls it _multiphrenia_) is the major
psychological problem of our time - but possibly also the birth-pangs of a
new kind of human being."

JL

-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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