The Book of Woe
The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A riveting exposé of the psychiatric profession’s bible from leading psychotherapist Gary Greenberg, The Book of Woe reveals the deeply flawed process by which mental disorders are invented and uninvented — and how suffering has been turned into a commodity.
Since its first edition in 1952, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has been regarded as the leading authority on mental-health diagnosis and research. Over the DSM’s various iterations, however, debate has raged over which psychological problems constitute mental illness: homosexuality, for instance, was a mental illness until 1973; and Asperger’s gained recognition in 1994 only to see its status challenged nearly twenty years later.
By examining the history of the DSM and the controversies over its latest revisions, Greenberg challenges the status quo of modern psychiatric practice. He shows how difficult it is — even impossible — to rigorously differentiate mental illness from everyday suffering; and sheds light on how the politics behind mental-health classification has caused diagnosis rates of autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and bipolar disorder to skyrocket.
Drawing on interviews with people on all sides of the debate, on historical examples, and on case studies from his own practice, Greenberg ultimately argues for a more humanistic approach to psychiatry. A combination of lively reportage and biting analysis, The Book of Woe will prove invaluable for expert and casual readers alike.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The rewriting of the bible of psychiatry shakes the field to its foundations in this savvy, searching expos . Greenberg (Manufacturing Depression), a journalist and practicing psychotherapist, follows the American Psychiatric Association's years-long revision of DSM-5, the latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which dictates to the industry everything from diagnoses and research programs to the all-important insurance billing codes. In his telling, it's a saga of fraught politics masquerading as disinterested medicine, as controversies explode around proposals to add grieving a family member's death to the roster of mental illnesses, delete Asperger's syndrome, and concoct vague new maladies Attenuated Psychosis Symptom Disorder? that could be used to rationalize treating millions of patients with ravaging drugs. The author digs deeper, questioning whether there is any organic reality underlying the DSM's confident taxonomy of disorders and suggesting that "psychiatric diagnosis is built on fiction and sold to the public as fact." Deploying wised-up, droll reportage from the trenches of psychiatric policy-making and caustic profiles of the discipline's luminaries, Greenberg subjects the practices of the mental health industry his own included to a withering critique. The result is a compelling insider's challenge to psychiatry's scientific pretensions and a plea to return it to its humanistic roots.
