Who Triggered Varoufakis

A friend of mine, a psychiatrist, writes me:

The new psychobabble word I hear is "trigger." I suppose it may have some genuine use in PTSD where intrusive thoughts are instigated by particular sensory inputs, smells often or sounds, and these "triggers" are reproducible. I think they should probably be called false reminders.
The treatment of course is to seek out more and more of these triggers and learn how to not be reactive.
However I hear the word trigger now from patients to mean "something else, not I, made me feel this way." Someone who had many affairs told me today when he is out with his wife he "gets triggered" in a restaurant where he met a woman he has slept with. Or his latest lover works at the same place, just the shift after him so he sees her still, and certainly is a "trigger" he needs to "work on." I think he means he gets reminded or feels guilty or horny or gets a hard-on. But "trigger" sounds like a symptom so how can you be mad at the poor guy?
Parents say "school triggers his bad behavior." Huh?? That's like saying potable water triggers bad behavior or air does or being born does. I will mark this word as one I will never utter to a patient or professional.
"Act out" is another one I never use. People use it when they mean "act up." "Act out" has a specific psychoanalytic meaning during a long term psychoanalysis. There's no other time to use it and no one gets that treatment anymore.
"School triggers our darling boy to act out." Sheesh!

Two words I hear & read a lot these days are “amazing” and “bizarre”. In social media people need to be brief about an experience or a video they want to share with others and it has to be amazing and/or bizarre or else no one will pay attention. So everyone seems to meet the most amazing people in  bizarre circumstances.

“Bizar” is also a Dutch word and even our prime minister uses it often. Just in the past weeks: the possible exit of Greece from the Euro zone is "bizarre", an armed man entering a tv studio was "bizarre" and again Greece is "bizarre" in considering opening their borders to loads of fugitives.

http://www.nu.nl/economie/3970373/rutte-noemt-mogelijke-grexit-bizar.html

http://www.nu.nl/politiek/3983051/rutte-noemt-incident-bij-nos-ernstig-en-bizar.html

http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4504/Economie/article/detail/3908188/2015/03/16/Rutte-noemt-migrantendreigement-Athene-bizar-en-onzinnig.dhtml

I wonder what is left to say when something happens that is truly bizarre.

In a speech, the Greek Finance minister Varoufakis said he would like to “stick the finger to Germany” and he held up “the finger”. When he was asked about this during a recent interview with Günther Jauch, Varoufakis flatly denied it, claimed the video was manipulated and he even posted a link to the “real” interview on his twitter account. But in that same link, one can see him “stick the finger” and saying that quote literally.

"stick the finger to Germany"

In that same clip, at 44:44 the camera shows a huge poster hanging on the back wall of the auditorium, a poster about the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, with the text “never sorry” and… a fist with “the finger”:

Ai Weiwei and "the finger"

Maybe Varoufakis had been staring too long at the poster across the hall from him, and trying to impress the boy and girl students he felt prompted to make the same gesture.

Varoufakis could claim "It wasn't me, but Ai Weiwei who triggered my hand making that vulgar sign."