The harms of labelling and diagnosing 

The harms and dangers of labelling and diagnosing — especially from a humanist perspective — are deep and often invisible:

• Identity becomes pathology: A person begins to see themselves as their diagnosis (“I am borderline,” “I am depressed”), rather than as a human being moving through pain.

• Reduction of complexity: Labels flatten the richness of a person’s story into a category. Nuance, history, and meaning get lost.

• Power imbalance: Diagnosis reinforces hierarchy — the “expert” names what is wrong, the client becomes the object of that naming.

• Stigma and shame: Even when intended to guide treatment, labels often leave people feeling defective, broken, or dangerous.

• Fixedness: Diagnoses can suggest permanence — as if the person cannot grow beyond the label, only manage it.

• Blind spots in care: Clinicians may stop listening once a label is given, assuming they “know” the person.

• Medicalization of normal suffering: Human struggles like grief, loneliness, or existential crisis get pathologized rather than witnessed.

From a humanist lens, the core harm is this: diagnosing shifts focus from relationship and presence to control and categorization. The person becomes an object of study rather than a subject in healing.