Quote:
It’s a problem that bothers Frances, and it even makes him wonder about the wisdom of his crusade against the DSM-5. Diagnosis, he says, is “part of the magic,” part of the power to heal patients—and to convince them to endure the difficulties of treatment. The sun is up now, and Frances is working on his first Diet Coke of the day. “You know those medieval maps?” he says. “In the places where they didn’t know what was going on, they wrote ‘Dragons live here.’”
He went on: “We have a dragon’s world here. But you wouldn’t want to be without that map.”
We need a hell of a lot more than a revised DSM-- or to protest one.
We need a revised society.
With less judgment and pathologization (I LOVE neologisms, don't you??).
With more tolerance and acceptance and compassion for our fellow creatures.
Too bad I don't have any more clue of how to get there than anyone else. It's kind of like setting out on the Interstate, on a completely undefined road trip: "Just drive. There's signs all over the place and we'll know where we're going when we get there."
Too bad a revised DSM looks like the best we can do for now.
Too bad the DSM-5 seems to be the best we can come up with.
God I'm tired. I'm tired. Tired.
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"Alas, our dried voices when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless, as wind in dry grass, or rats' feet over broken glass in our dry cellar." --TS Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
24 Jan 2012, 10:37 pm
