… from the collective “rich, fat, tired” mind of America is about to released. The most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – a megaton Memories of Overdevelopment, As I Lay Diagnosing, and Diazepam Comes for the Archbishop – will soon hit the shelves.
Stephen Dedalus, in Ulysses, called Irish art “the cracked looking-glass of a servant.” The DSM is the cracked looking-glass of a master. It is our pill-dependent, Alexandrine culture’s most soul-searching, compendious, self-expression yet.
Allen Frances, who was there when the DSM started to explode, has consistently warned against pathologizing an entire country. Many other people – and many mental health organizations – have done the same. But our family practitioners remain weirdly dependent upon this obese mashup, this encyclical of enervation.
The best that can be said about it is that it adequately conveys what we have become.
December 10th, 2012 at 2:22PM
… and here I always thought DSM-MD stood for Diabolical and Self-serving Mischief for Manufacturing Diseases!