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The director of the National Anxiety Center says the United States is “a nation of marvelously dysfunctional families.”
Everyone gets in on the act. In the San Antonio Express-News, a writer visits the slums and finds people “who live their lives in the midst of a dysfunctional city.” A sportswriter for The New York Times fears that baseball may soon be declared “n’ot only dysfunctional, but dead.” The Wall Street Journal comments upon “the dysfunctionalSimpsons” of TV. A hit show off Broadway “gives new meaning to the Spanish word for dysfunctional.”
It remains to report that in the comic strip B.C., the chief character is offered “dysfunctional family values” on sale. Madonna speculates on people who are “dysfunctional sexually.” There is even a new book out, “I’m Dysfunctional-You’re Dysfunctional,” by Wendy Kaminer.
How did “dysfunction” get to be the vichyssoise of 1992? Who knows how anything happens in language? Random House dates the word from 1915-20, and I am told that “dysfunctional” is a perfectly respectable word in medicine and in clinical psychology. OK by me.
In recent years we have seen the rise and fall of “parameters.” Five or six years ago everyone had a pet pa
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