depersonalize

English

Etymology

de- +‎ personalize

Verb

depersonalize (third-person singular simple present depersonalizes, present participle depersonalizing, simple past and past participle depersonalized)

1. (transitive) To remove a sense of personal identity or individual character from something; to anonymize.
   • 1968, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd edition, London: Fontana Press, published 1993, page 19:

     These "Eternal Ones of the Dream" are not to be confused with the personally modified symbolic figures that appear in nightmare and madness to the still tormented individual. Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche.

   • 1982 April 8, Rashi Fein, “What Is Wrong with the Language of Medicine?”, in New England Journal of Medicine‎^[1], volume 306, number 14, →DOI, →ISSN, pages 863–864:

     A new language is infecting the culture of American medicine. It is the language of the marketplace, of the tradesman, and of the cost accountant. It is a language that depersonalizes both patients and physicians and describes medical care as just another commodity.

2. (transitive) To present (something) as an impersonal object.
3. (psychiatry, intransitive) To suffer an episode of depersonalization.

   He's depersonalizing right now, so he's considering checking himself into the hospital.

Alternative forms

• depersonalise

Related terms

• depersonalization
• depersonalization disorder

Translations

remove a sense of personal identity from something

• German: depersonalisieren, entpersönlichen
• Greek: αποπροσωποποιώ (el) (apoprosopopoió)
• Italian: spersonalizzare (it)