Suzy Chapman owns and maintains two of the finest sites relating to ME
and to the DSM-5. Here they are with their own titles and links:
These are two carefully maintained sites with much material and many
links about the topics they are concerned with, and but one proviso,
which I only make because some have insisted on making this clear on
forums for patients with ME: To appreciate the value of these sites, you
need to be willing and able to think rationally.
I learned a lot from these sites, including that Ms. Chapman has a fine
mind and an excellent prose style.
To turn to the DSM-5, first by clarifying some terminology: "The
DSM" (<- Wikipedia), in the words the Wikipedia gives to the
subject, from which I quote the first four paragraphs, minus some links,
is this:
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM) is published by the
American Psychiatric Association and provides a common language
and standard criteria for the
classification of mental disorders. It is used in the United
States and in varying degrees around the world, by clinicians,
researchers,
psychiatric drug regulation agencies,
health
insurance companies,
pharmaceutical companies, and policy makers.
The DSM has attracted controversy and criticism as well as
praise. There have been five revisions since it was first published
in 1952, gradually including more
mental disorders, although some have been removed and are no
longer considered to be mental disorders, most notably
homosexuality.
The manual evolved from systems for collecting census and
psychiatric hospital statistics, and from a manual developed by
the US Army, and was dramatically revised in 1980. The last major
revision was the fourth edition ("DSM-IV"), published in
1994, although a "text revision" was produced in 2000. The
fifth
edition ("DSM-5")
is currently in consultation, planning and preparation, due for
publication in May 2013.
ICD-10 Chapter V: Mental and behavioural disorders, part of
the
International Classification of Diseases produced by the
World Health Organization (WHO), is another commonly used guide,
more so in Europe
and other parts of the world. The
coding system used in the DSM-IV is designed to correspond with
the codes used in the ICD, although not all codes may match at all
times because the two publications are not revised synchronously
The latest news is that the public revision period scheduled for May of
this year - when "the public" i.e. those to be diagnosed by the DSM, to
be treated according to its terms, and to pay their psychiatrists or
psychotherapists for it - has been postponed to August/September of 2011:
The first of these links is to dr. Frances' blogs; the second from
the quote there to Suzy Chapman's DSM-5 site.
Why is this important for persons with ME, and indeed important for
anyone who is interested in rational and moral medical science? Here
are links to some of my answers in Nederlog, preceded by three links
to others explaining it:
Next, here is a list of Nederlogs I wrote about the DSM-5, followed
by a note on prurience (yes, you read that
well) - and the reason to list these items I wrote on the subject is
to have them in one place, also for myself, in case I want to use
them.
First in 2010:
-
On the DSM-5TM
This is a fine quoted exposition by Suzy Chapman plus 21
notes by me
-
Brit. Jn. Psychiatry: 78% of the British are not
sane
This is a review of an article in the BJP argueing the title, with
help of the DSM-IV. (In case you missed the logical point: It
follows most normal folks are insane - if the DSM-IV makes sense, to
be sure, but that's a proviso few make, and that far fewer know how
to make rationally.)
-
More about psychiatry
Mostly about what this elderly psychologist thinks about psychiatry.
-
Feynman vs Wessely
From Feynman - a genius in physics - "Cargo Cult Science", against
pseudoscientists, including Wessely and the editors of the DSM-5.
-
McCulloch vs. Wessely
From McCulloch, who started out as a medical doctor and
psychiatrist, and ended as one of the founders of neuroscience and
cybernetics, who was much abhorred by the standards and contents of
psychiatry of his day.
-
Morningstar shines a bright light on
postmodernism
A good article on postmodernism (pomo), which is one of the
mainstays of the DSM-5 and the Wessely school in pseudoscientific
psychiatry, and a major liability for the continuance of
civilization in the West.
-
More on postmodernism + logic
My own take on the rise of pomo and its great dangers, and what
intelligent persons can do to prevent it taking hold of their ways
of thinking, speaking and writing (for yes: It is doublespeak,
it is totalitarian, it is dangerous nonsense put
forward by a bunch of terribles simplificateurs to an
"academic audience" that is the least gifted and least intelligent,
on average, of any "academic audience" ever, since the Western
universities were "democratically" levelled in the late sixties and
early seventies.
- Psychiatry, psychology, CBT,
GET, DSM-5 and XMRV
This only is about the DSM-5 in passing, but mentions the Greenberg
article linked above.
Then in 2011:
-
DSM-5
Rather a lot more including my extensive comments on the Spiegel
interview for radio linked above.
-
More on the APA's mockery of medicine and
morality
More fundamental objections to the APA's DSM-5, including its
policies of (i) excluding virtually everyone from criticizing,
commenting and indeed seeing what's happening behind the scenes and
(ii) reinventing psychiatry in an editorial committee on the basis
of a postmodernistic irrationalism that seeks to attribute to any
disease a somatic and a psychological dimension (which is not
rational science but irrational theology: The APA as would be
doctors of the soul, like reverend ministers). [See
below on prurience.]
- More on the
APA and the DSM-5
More of the same, with a fine comment by Suzy Chapman.
-
On natural
philosophy, philosophy of science, and psychiatry
My own take of it all, as a logical philosopher and psychologist:
Here you find many relevant texts mentioned.
- me+ME: More
on Freud and psychiatry
Considerably more on the failings of modern psychiatry (sadistic
maltreatment of children in France) and the moral and intellectual
failings of Freud and Charcot, with links to Richard Webster's site
and publications on Freud (who really was a fraud, though I should
add drs. Frances and Spitzer disagree with me on this).
- The gentle art of bullshitting the
public for money
On the subject, with reference to a book by philosopher Frankfurt on
the subject of bullshitting, which is what the DSM-5 is, like much
of psychiatry, psychotherapy, psychobabble, like much of religion
and politics
-
More on bullshitting
My own bullshitprotector mentioned and shown in use viz.
mathematical logic.
- More on the DSM-5
Only briefly about the DSM-5 but with fine links, illustrations and
quotations
As you may validly infer without having read any of these: I did
write a fair amount on the DSM-5 since September 2010, and indeed
rather a lot of it was downloaded or at least read a lot, and in
particular
Here is the note I placed today at the start
of that nicely argued text:
Note of March 6, 2011:
As it happens, this text ended with a rather famous picture of
Freud with a cigar - who famously said "Sometimes a cigar is just
a cigar" i.e. not what he in others would call a penis symbol -
that was photoshopped to him holding a penis.As it also
happens, this is a file that, perhaps because of its title, was
read a lot, it seems, but hardly ever downloaded. I had already
provided a version without this Freud picture, but will today
switch them, as I must infer that most of the readers of this
text, very probably for the most part psychiatrists or
psychologists, are too prurient to appreciate a bawdy visual joke
on Freud.
|
My explanation? Here it is, in two parts:
A. As I explain in a note to
More on the APA's mockery of medicine and
morality:
For those whose consciences are clean or
Christian, or who simply are prurient or in love with authorities: The Father of Psychoanalysis
can be seen in an unbowdlerized version picture:
Plus Freud (and Fliess?), that may
not be fit for family-viewing.
I wouldn't want my arguments not considered for prurient reasons.... (
)
B. But personally I think that Freud was a fraud ever since
I read ca. 1968 Patrick Mullahy's "Oedipus - Myth and Complex", which
is a fair summary of psychiatry up to the 1960ies, and which convinced
me immediately upon reading it that Freud, and indeed Jung, Ranke and
quite a few other Leading Psychiatrists were frauds - which I still
think, but with much more evidence than I had then, that also includes
a cursory reading of Freud's correspondence with his friend Wilhelm
Fliess, with whom he also shared a passion for cocaine, that seemed to
explain to me fairly well why Sigmund didn't sleep with his wife after
age 42.
Anyway... my readers need not agree with me, and indeed I know a
few whose intelligence is considerable and who are qualified
academically in psychology or medicine, and who look upon Freud with
more sympathy and admiration than I do.
But I do think that he was a fraud, though, and that his particular
kind of bullshit did much harm, and also that he had no moral or
rational right to present it as if it were science, even if he
believed in his nonsense, which I personally can't believe, because I
can see Freud was a clever man, but not honest with it.
(**)
Notes
(*) As it happens "APA" also abbreviates the
American Psychologists', Poolplayers', Planning and Physiotherapy
Associations - among others.
(**) And I should add that ever since 1968 I
have been at least a little amazed that so few folks saw through him
- but then again (i) it really is a matter of nous and
character and (ii) history shows
that many intelligent folks have believed lots of nonsense,
apparently for no better reasan than because most in their
environments believed it.
P.S. Corrections have to be made later, if any.
