'Concept creep' in family law: What is it and how should you address it?

Abstract

Many psychological concepts have undergone a phenomenon known as “concept creep.” Concept creep was first named by Nick Haslam in 2016, who identified its effects on the concepts of abuse, bullying, trauma, mental disorder, addiction and prejudice. In “Concept Creep: Psychology’s Expanding Concepts of Harm and Pathology,” Haslam contends that “in every case there had been a series of extensions to working definitions, which summed to large increases in the applicability of each concept.” Others have identified the effect of concept creep on terms like “gaslight” and “emotional labor.” Another aspect of concept creep is hyperbole, or labeling that is hijacked from diagnostic terms, and pirated into common parlance in a way that alters the initial definition of the terms.