According to statistics provided by the National Institute of Mental Health in 2022, roughly 30 million U.S. adults had received some kind of psychological treatment in the previous year. Some of those patients probably referred to their doctor or therapist as a “shrink”—as in, “I need to go see my shrink.”
Though a very common slang term for a psychiatrist or psychologist, shrink doesn’t seem to have the same kind of obvious etymology as doc. What does shrinking, or a reduction of size, have to do with psychological help?
The Origin of Shrink
Shrink as a noun hasn’t been around for very long. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first printed mention to 1966, when author Thomas Pynchon used it in his satirical novel The Crying of Lot 49. Pynchon wrote of the protagonist’s counselor, “Dr. Hilarius, her shrink or psychotherapist.”
Where did Pynchon hear it? The OED references a possible origin of shrink as an abbreviation of headshrinker, a colloquial term it traces to a 1950 TIME magazine article about William Boyd, the 55-year-old actor who portrayed popular Western hero Hopalong Cassidy.
“During his early years in Hollywood, anyone who had predicted that [Boyd] would end up as the rootin’-tootin’ idol of U.S. children would have been led instantly off to a headshrinker,” the profile read. In a footnote, the magazine explained that “headshrinker” was “Hollywood jargon for a psychiatrist.” It seemed as though editors weren’t confident that readers would know what the term was referring to, an indication it wasn’t part of the wider public lexicon.
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How headshrinker wound up being film industry shorthand for therapist is open to speculation. But in 1989, Roger Pease, an editor with Merriam-Webster, told a newspaper columnist he had a theory: headshrinker, he asserted, referred to the custom of shrinking heads, where tribes in Ecuador and Peru took decapitated heads and removed bone, muscle, fat, and brain, leaving the intact skin and hair. The skin was then put in a clay pot and heated in order to shrink the collagen fibers, leaving a recognizably human head known as a tsantsa. These preserved heads were believed to harbor spiritual energy.
Psychiatrists could be thought of as headshrinkers not because they reduced a patient’s physical size but because they reduced the ego. It might also be because they can shrink a person’s problems down to something manageable.
Obviously, not everyone seeking mental health counseling is in need of an ego reduction. But since the term appears to have originated in Hollywood, perhaps that was a more common issue. At any rate, usage of shrink steadily (and ironically) grew through the 1970s and beyond.
Is Shrink Offensive to Therapists?
Calling a police officer a “cop” is generally a pretty neutral label. While informal, it’s not widely considered offensive. Calling them a “pig” is another story. So where does shrink fall on the slang spectrum?
Writing for Psychology Today in 2012, Dr. Ronald Riggio grappled with the question. “There are enough negative connotations to the word shrink that make it a turn-off to many psychologists, and it seems to be particularly inapplicable (and perhaps offensive) to psychologists who aren’t involved in psychotherapy, such as industrial-organizational psychologists,” Riggio wrote. “But as with many nicknames, it could actually be used as a way of making an informal connection—a sort of term of endearment.”
Shrink, he wrote, might be closer to a common (and often negative) slang term for lawyer: a shark.
Type of Therapist | Description |
|---|---|
Psychiatrist | Medical doctors with M.D. or D.O. degrees who can prescribe medication for mental health treatment; may see patients less frequently (monthly or bimonthly) |
Psychologist | Doctors with Ph.D., Psy.D., or Ed.D. degrees who treat mental health via talk therapy and other methods; cannot prescribe medication except in certain states and with additional training; may see patients more frequently (weekly) |
Psychotherapist | Therapists with degree(s) as a licensed clinical social worker or licensed mental health counselor; may rely on talk therapy as a treatment |
Therapist | A broad term that may refer to mental or general health professionals in a variety of specialties (clinical worker, marriage therapy, family therapy, physical therapy) |
Social Worker | Attended undergraduate and/or graduate school for social work; may place emphasis on environmental/external factors in counseling |
It’s possible shrink was originally intended to be similarly derogatory, but not for the professionals. As the term was used more frequently in the 1970s and beyond, the idea of seeking help for mental health was still somewhat stigmatized. Headshrinker or shrink may have been a nod to that—a way of dismissing another’s need for psychological support.
With modern culture more aware of the importance of mental health, there’s now less reason to feel self-conscious about requiring the help of a mental health professional: The term is therefore less likely to be received negatively. You probably won’t offend your treating doctor by calling them a “shrink,” but if you’re worried, you can always use your hour to talk about it.