psychobabble

1. derogatoryuncountableThe jargon of psychology and psychoanalysis, especially when used pretentiously to discuss mundane issues.First known use 20th c.

   He didn't want to hear any new-age psychobabble, like " find your inner peace."

   2007, Max Brooks, “Saving Mel Brooks”, in Mens Health, section 22.2

   2 more examples

   We are living, practically no one has to be reminded, in a therapeutic age. The sign in every storefront reads: "Psychobabble spoken here".

   May 27, 1975, R.D. Rosen, Boston Phoenix

   The psychological patter of the '70s is as inescapable as Muzak and just as numbing: Are you relating? Going through heavy changes? In touch with yourself and doing your own thing? Are you up front, or just hung up and uptight? Boston Writer R.D. (for Richard Dean) Rosen calls it psychobabble, and in his new book by that title (Atheneum, $8.95) sees America awash in soggy therapeutic clichés.

   1977 December 3, “Psychobabble”, in Time

present singular third person psychobabbles · participle present psychobabbling · participle past psychobabbled · past psychobabbled

1. intransitiveTo speak or converse using this kind of jargon.