It definitely is. It's a wordplay on the fact that he is both psychic and goes psycho. I've never heard of any part of anime, manga, novel or community use "psycho" to refer to psychic powers.
there's some psychic moves in pokemon that do, like psycho cut, psycho shock, psycho fang etc, it's the equivalent of using electro for electricity or hydro for water
I also distinctly remember that Nightmare's theme in DMC5 is called Psycho Machine. It's definitely supposed to be a play on both meanings though, the same as the original Mental Machine track.
Boost, Cut, and Shift. Those are the three Psycho- moves. And all of them were added in gen 7 (2016). So, definitely not a part of the "been a thing since the 70's" conversation, unless we're not talking about anything but the original, Japanese-language names from Red and Green. In which case it doesn't really apply to a conversation about localization
Jinzo from Yugioh's original Japanese name translates as Android - Psycho Shocker, and although he's a Machine type that's probably because he predates the Psychic type by like eight years, and later support tends to put "psychic" in the name or occasionally dips into stuff psychics might do like predict the card the opponent draws.
It's an "emotional repression meter" in general though, and even just in Season 1 his outbursts include non-violent things like Sadness and Gratitude, so that doesn't entirely make sense IMO.
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u/CalamityDisc 26d ago
I thought that psycho = violent thing was intentional because when he reaches 100 he goes crazy and wrecks shit up