The DSM: How Psychiatrists Redefine 'Disordered'
Time CNN
By John Cloud 
13 February, 2010


http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1964196,00.html


The attempt to catalog all the ways that Americans can go crazy dates at least to 1840, when the Census included a question on "idiocy/insanity." From those two simple categories, we now have more than 300 separate disorders; they are listed in a 943-page book called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM  for short. The book is important because doctors, insurers and researchers all over the world use it as a reference, a dictionary of everything humanity considers to be mentally unbalanced.

From the article:
Also, "sexual avoidance disorder" would be dropped and "transvestic fetishism" would become "transvestic disorder," although the diagnostic criteria themselves would not change: the DSM still seems to have a problem with cross-dressing.

Yes, the certainly do have a problem with cross dressing, but with people like Ken Zucker on the board, it's expected.

Overall, the article seems to be saying the psychiatric community cannot come up with a solution that really works.  Here's all these highly regarded experts in the field and they are coming across more confused than logical and sane.  Maybe they should establish a criteria to determine what makes a sane therapist before they try to tell us we're nuts.

Quote from: Julie Marie on February 13, 2010, 12:01:14 PM
a sane therapist...

No such thing in my opinion!

Seriously, even most of the psychiatrists I know, and I am on drinking and/or intimate terms with at least two of them, tell me that to be a really good mind doctor it is necessary first to be a little bit crazy oneself!

Julei,

I think your hitting pretty close to home in how confused/ing this draft proposal really is. But, I wonder if there is such animosity from Zucker & Co. because of the huge outcry from our community over his and other appointments to the committee, that their ego's became so damaged and/or they wish to retaliate on us with obfuscation and sleight of hand.

I am beginning to feel that they are attempting to drive as much of a wedge into, and factionalize so deeply the tg community, that hopefully (to them), there will be enough "satisfied elements" that most of the harsh criticism that our community has lashed out upon them with, will stop. So yeah, I do see some "insanity" within their ranks. Let's start with Zucker and Blanchard!

So frustrating!


Dawn