“The human body is essentially something other than an animal organism.” – Heidegger
I was ready to write a blog post about Lewis Hine and his incredibly moving series of children photographs, somehow tying them in with the Republican primary and Newt Gingrich’s suggestion to ignore the legal and moral developments of the second half of the twentieth century.
And then I changed my mind.
Anyone not familiar with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is missing out on the greatest artifact of the medicalization/scientification of our interior world. The manual, published by the American Psychiatric Association, contains the legal definitions of insanity. It’s used in court rooms, doctor’s offices, insurance offices, congressional offices, and pharmaceutical boardrooms all over the country. It can change your sentencing. It can change our laws. It can change our medical diagnoses.
And, of course, it’s written by an unelected group of specialists who are or recently were on the payrolls of major pharmaceutical companies.
So the newest version of the DSM-IV, as it’s known in short hand, will be the first revised edition since 1993. A time so receded into our foggy past, a time so thoroughly pre-internet, that to the person whom culture happens to, like bad weather (and who remembers how much it rained in 1993?), the DSM might as well be being published for the first time.
But, to spread a metaphor thin, the rain had never actually stopped. The fact still remains that no matter how troubling some of the proposed changes to the DSM might be, it has always been part of a shadowy parallel world of institutions that hold legal and economic power, but are completely unaccountable to the society in which they exist. Nevertheless, some of the proposed changes are:
- Tightening the definition of autism, effectively cutting off people on the lower end of the spectrum from receiving assistance. (Argument: We are finally winning the war on autism.)
- Broadening the definition of depression to include grieving after the death of a loved one. (Argument: $)
- Experiencing delusional thinking and hallucinations, instead of being considered just one of many symptoms of schizophrenia, gets its own category, “attenuated psychosis syndrome.” (Argument: Diagnose early, prescribe early, i.e. $$)
- The addition of “premenstrual dysphoric disorder”, a general lethargy or mild depression before mensus. Known in less scientific circles as it being your “time of the month.” (Argument: Is there any way we can make even more money off of women? i.e. $$$)
If all of this upsets you to the core of your bleeding heart, that’s great. It really should. The whole thing smacks of dirty money, influence, and lobbyist backslapping.
But if that’s all you see, you aren’t looking deeply enough. Consider that who you are is, to a large extent, dictated by a panel of experts. And it HAS to be this way, because you didn’t go to medical school. You have a B.A. in Art Therapy. Or maybe you dropped out of high school. Either way, you aren’t as qualified as a specialist is to define and describe your being. Better yet, your Being. And so you have to wonder if, in a civilization in which something so fundamental as creating identity is being monopolized by attainment of science-knowledge, democracy is possible.
And excuse my metaphysics when I ask if in that civilization you are possible at all.
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