I know that I just wrote a bit about the goofiness of psychiatry, but I just can't leave it alone.  Hmmm...maybe I'd qualify for an obsessive-compulsive disorder there...So read this neat piece, but don't let one see you and definitely don't start laughing to yourself (at least in public).   My new favorite disorder is post-traumatic bitterness disorder (PTED), and a nice piece about it here.

It is kind of a microcosm of all politics.  There are lots of special interest 'disorder' groups, all vying for inclusion.  And the treatments are usually all the same (some medication if you are a psychiatrist or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) if you are not.   So here they all are, vying for space.  Hope they all get some.  Oh, and I think that PTED is the weltanshauung of New Englanders.  Since when did people start thinking is was abnormal? 

Vote for my disease....

I think that folks know I am a big fan of psychiatry, having worked in it and studied it for 25 years now, on and off.  I still think Nietzsche's definition is most apt, "Psychology was born of idleness."  Especially in that we understand to day that the mind/personality/your noun here is an apparition of the concatenation of  the nonlinear activity in the biological substrate (which I pointedly would not reduce to the 'brain' nor, in fact, to the individual, but more on that later).  So the LA Times ran this great article about upper middle class white folk who want to medicalize their children's behavior (and note, I did not call it 'bad' behavior...it is contrary to the parents' desires, but may be fully warranted as a measure of resistance).

What we have here is the usual kind of 'evolution' in psychiatry and psychology.  More and more non-conformist behavior becomes pathological, which means treatable, which means billable.   Think of it as medicating puppies for urinating in the house. Lots of incentive, but virtually no real need.  That is the prescription psychiatry has followed since the introduction of pharmacological interventions.  It is also why they are on the lowest rung of the medical hierarchy. But back to the point.  The point is that psychiatric 'disorders' are decided by a vote.  Folks vote new ones in and old ones out.  I'm personally pulling for 'disruptive mood dysregulation disorder,'  in that the phenomenal inanity of it is majestic.  But, more importantly and more interestingly, I am pulling for Cecelia.  Keep kicking, kid.  Eventually the adults will go away....