I came across the Rumpelstiltskin Phenomenon, a concept that is pertinent to my contention that the focus on renaming the phenomenon now most commonly known as patient compliance or treatment adherence is unlikely to prove an advantage, even if the renaming is accomplished.
The Rumpelstiltskin Phenomenon
From: A Dictionary of Psychology (2001). Author: Andrew M. Colman.
Rumpelstiltskin Phenomenon The tendency for the naming of something to create the impression of imparting an understanding of it. It applies, for example, to the naming of mental disorders: a person who tells implausible lies may be said to be suffering from pseudologia fantastica, but that term is nothing more than a name for implausible lying, and any impression that it imparts an understanding of the phenomenon is a cognitive illusion. [Named after Rumpelstiltskin in a famous fairly tale, called Rumpelstilzchen in the German version collected by the brothers Grimm, a strange dwarf who exerts a baleful influence over a miller's daughter until she eventually gains power over him by learning his name]
I confess to feeling gratified to discover that someone has articulated the ambiguous notion I had developed in thinking about the renaming of patient compliance. It is, of course, a tad ironic that I’m happy about finding the phenomenon I grasped instinctively – that naming something doesn’t necessarily improve ones understanding of it - has a name