DSM debates - Volume I

Between 2009 and 2013, Nassir Ghaemi debated Allen Frances and other DSM supporters and critics in the Psychology Today blog website.  In these debates, it became clear to Ghaemi that the supporters of DSM, like Frances, and the critics of DSM all shared a similar perspective: an anti-scientific attitude steeped in postmodernist cultural assumptions.  They criticized DSM for being too medical and too biological whereas the problem with DSM, according to Ghaemi, is that it is not medical, biological, and scientific enough. 

In these three volumes of posts and links to other posts among his critics, Ghaemi lays bare what is wrong with DSM and what is wrong with the critics of DSM: the same thing - postmodernist anti-science attitudes. 

In this volume, the following chapters are presented:

•Death by DSM
•Science and politics: DSM-5 and bipolar illness
•The secret of DSM-IV: The danger for DSM-5
•First do no harm – Part I: An empty slogan
•First do no harm – Part II: Taking disease seriously