Nesta wrote:
>DSM-IV? the well-known emperor, Disciplinary sadomasochism the fourth?
It's far less exciting but perhaps no less frightening - DSM-IV is the
diagnostic manual used by psychiatrists. Sorry, I should have been less
cryptic. It seems to me that according to DSM-IV we all fall short of the
ideal to which you referred, and it's the policing of that situation that
particularly concerns me.
For those interested .......
DSM-IV is so wide-ranging and all-encompassing that it effectively renders
all people mentally ill in some degree. I don't have a problem with that
because it undermines the depiction of "the mentally ill" as "Other", with
all the stigma and disempowerment that entails, but I do have a problem
with the psychiatric establishment using it as a way of legitimating their
expansionistic aspirations and their attempts to become authorities in all
aspects of everyday life. It is not difficult to see why the public
colludes in the identification of such 'experts' but I find it an
uncomfortable development.
Colin Holmes,
Western Sydney
>DSM-IV? the well-known emperor, Disciplinary sadomasochism the fourth?
It's far less exciting but perhaps no less frightening - DSM-IV is the
diagnostic manual used by psychiatrists. Sorry, I should have been less
cryptic. It seems to me that according to DSM-IV we all fall short of the
ideal to which you referred, and it's the policing of that situation that
particularly concerns me.
For those interested .......
DSM-IV is so wide-ranging and all-encompassing that it effectively renders
all people mentally ill in some degree. I don't have a problem with that
because it undermines the depiction of "the mentally ill" as "Other", with
all the stigma and disempowerment that entails, but I do have a problem
with the psychiatric establishment using it as a way of legitimating their
expansionistic aspirations and their attempts to become authorities in all
aspects of everyday life. It is not difficult to see why the public
colludes in the identification of such 'experts' but I find it an
uncomfortable development.
Colin Holmes,
Western Sydney