Sebastian Marshall's general mechanism, named in Lingua Franca #9 with "perfectionism" as the case but generalizable across virtue language: when a word that names a *good concept* gets redefined to name a *pathology*, the concept itself becomes culturally inaccessible. The mechanism in four steps: 1. A word originally maps to a virtue concept (e.g., "perfectionism" = persistence of will toward optimal quality of being). 2. Psychological or therapeutic discourse appropriates the word for a narrow, pathological pattern (e.g., "perfectionism" = paralysis, eating disorders, excessive concern with appearances). 3. The narrow pathological meaning crowds out the older virtue meaning in common usage. 4. The cultural advice to "avoid being a perfectionist" now disables the virtue along with the pathology. Marshall's framing: > "One of the most pernicious and damaging things is when a word that maps to a good concept — perfectionism — is instead pathologized, simplified incorrectly to a small part of the puzzle, and then the simplification is highlighted as a bad thing. How many young people are instructed to 'not be a perfectionist' in the West? When really, they would benefit more from being encouraged to worry less about appearances and more about achieving — i.e., *actual perfectionism*." The reader's exercise Marshall sets: > "What other useful concepts have had their corresponding words bastardized and pathologized? I think of a few dozen such words immediately." Candidate words worth examining under this lens: ambition, drive, intensity, discipline, judgment, seriousness, devotion, obsession, gravitas, austerity, rigor, conscientiousness. The pattern is the same as [[Common Natures Suspect Noble Ones]] played out at linguistic scale: the virtue is not refuted; it is reclassified as a disorder. See also [[Weaponization of Psychology]] for the institutional version.