The DSM-V Dilemma and the Crisis of Modern Psychiatry

By Salvatore Iacobello, M.D. | Published July 5, 2024

Editor’s Note: The evolution of humanity’s understanding of emotional, mental, bioenergetic health and illness took a giant leap forward with the work of Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich. Their work, discoveries, and understanding are in danger of disappearing. The following article, The DSM-V Dilemma and the Crisis of Modern Psychiatry, was published in 2011. It is reprinted here because its content reflects the continued deterioration of contemporary psychiatry. For a further exposition of the decline of psychiatry read Charles Konia’s On the Shoulders of a Giant, published in this issue of  The Journal of Orgonomy, in which we learn how Freud and Reich were both attacked, defamed, and rejected through character assasination, distortion, misappropriation, and misuse.

Virginia L. Whitener, Ph.D.

Author’s Note: In the intervening years since 2011 there has been no significant development in mainstream psychiatry worthy of being considered a step forward in the understanding of mental illness. No progress has been made toward recognizing and considering bioemotional functions. Useful, productive debate in this regard has ceased. The major development within the field at this time seems to be the politicization of the profession of psychiatry.

The DSM-V was finally released to the public in 2013 after years of discussion, disagreement, and debate. The end result was the wholesale adoption of biochemical reductionism and the removal of bioemotional life from psychiatry. In the process, diagnostic categories were reshuffled, new conditions were introduced, and others eliminated. For example, Narcissistic Personality Disorder was kept but the door was left open for its elimination.

One new diagnosis, Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD), was introduced with the goal of solving the problem that too many children were receiving the diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder. The new diagnosis, DMDD, is now used as a catch-all whenever children’s behavior and emotions are a problem. This is what happens when there is a complete renunciation of any attempt to understand the disturbances underlying the manifestations of psychiatric illness.

Understanding character is essential to making sense of the symptoms and conditions seen by the psychiatrist. Character diagnosis, however, was discarded by psychiatry a long time ago. Groups of mental health professionals instead created and chose categories based on statistical and epidemiological criteria. This system introduced a level of uncertainty and subjectivity, making any progress toward a uniform, meaningful diagnostic system questionable. It deadened and continues to deaden psychiatry.

Oblivious to these shortcomings, psychiatry has elected to maintain the belief that progress in genetics and biochemistry will provide the answer to unresolved questions and produce reliable treatments for mental disorders. Having reduced the workings of the human psyche to those of a complex biochemical machine, psychiatry’s only hope and its survival rest on this unveiling of the genetics of mental illnesses and the anticipated new treatments to follow. Unfortunately, so many genes have been discovered to be associated with each supposed mental disorder that not much can be done with this knowledge. It would be ludicrous to consider modifying the hundreds and ever-increasing numbers of genes found with each disorder.

Likewise, the hope of identifying the particular medication that works for a particular individual, based on genetic markers, has been illusory. Genetic testing, promoted for years by the pharmaceutical industry as the answer to the problem of finding which medication would work, has not contributed much to the treatment of patients. Based on my years of experience working in a variety of settings (hospitals, outpatient clinics, and intensive outpatient care), genetic testing is little used by clinicians. Most of the time the benefit is unclear and could have been achieved without the contribution of genetic testing. Mainstream psychiatrists faced with patients who don’t respond to medication, patients who are “treatment resistant,” can only continue to look for the right medication or combination of medications until all possibilities are exhausted. Reaching outside the field of biochemical and mechanical treatments to try to understand why a patient doesn’t get better is outside the scope of modern psychiatry and has been left to psychologists and sociologists to figure out.

Pharmacological treatments have become more aggressive and more complex. Great hope during the last few years has been placed on the use of the drug ketamine, an anesthetic that induces a temporary trancelike state. It was supposed to treat depression in patients that have not responded to other treatments. The drug, however, affects perception and thinking in a profound manner and can cause psychotic and dissociative states as well as disturbances in thinking. The use of this drug for psychiatric treatment was approved a few years ago by the FDA for intranasal use, limited by a special protocol and the fact that it needs to be administered under the supervision of a physician in an office. As of this writing, its use has not become widespread.

Along the same line, but at this time limited to academic research centers, is the use of hallucinogenic substances (LSD, psilocybin) to induce altered states of mind. This has been observed to lead to unexpected improvement in subjects with severe depression after one treatment episode. The prescribing of hallucinogens brings together the mechanistic and mystical sides of psychiatry, as chemical substances are used to induce a quasi-mystical experience in hopes of therapeutic improvement. These experimental treatments are seen by some as the promising future of psychiatry. It is as if the clock has been turned back to the 1960s when some pharmacologic research focused on the use of psychedelic substances.

Another therapeutic tool worth mentioning is transcranial magnetic stimulation of the brain. Again, its effectiveness has turned out to be questionable and not the ultimate solution hoped for. It is also recommended for treatment-resistant depression and the response rates are limited. In addition, the patient needs to continue taking medication.

The effectiveness of these pharmacological and physical treatments, however, is beside the point. What is most important to see is that even if they were one hundred percent effective, these treatments end up suppressing the patient’s emotional life and preserving the disconnection from emotions, the root of psychiatric illness. With these procedures the patient may be asymptomatic but cut off from his emotions, just living life as if a machine with no real happiness or satisfaction.

Meditation and relaxation techniques together with the use of yoga have also become very popular. They tend to create a state of inner peace and at least temporary emotional “calm.” However, the heart of the problem, characterological and muscular armor, is overlooked and unaddressed.

Psychotherapy has been largely expunged from psychiatry and has become the domain of psychologists and social workers. It is mostly relegated to a supportive role without any pretense of a therapeutic impact. As an internal medicine professor of mine used to say, it is like using warm compresses to treat a serious infection.

It is clear that mainstream psychiatry during the last 10 years has continued to move between the two poles of mechanistic and mystical thinking, excluding from its study the role of emotions and the disturbance of basic bioenergetic pulsation in human illness. The initial work on the DSM-V at least led to some debate about how to understand mental illness and its connection to biology. That debate has been abandoned. There is no longer an attempt to understand the nature and function of psychiatric conditions. Currently, moreover, mainstream psychiatry is devoting itself more and more to the promotion of political and social causes as it is coming under the influence of widespread community activism.

Introduction

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the official guide to the diagnosis of psychiatric conditions in the United States and throughout the world. Published by the American Psychiatric Association and updated periodically, each subsequent version of the DSM undergoes stages of development that include creating new proposed criteria and guidelines for the diagnosis of mental disorders and conducting field trials to establish their validity and reliability. The edition presently in use is DSM-IV-R. It was intended to be a transitional edition between DSM-IV and DSM-V, originally scheduled for publication in May 2011.

Work on DSM-V started in 2007, but publication has been postponed until May 2013 amidst controversy reported in both the professional and lay media. The likelihood of publishing an acceptable edition is currently considered at risk and could end up being delayed indefinitely.

Problems of DSM-V

Allen Frances, M.D., Chair of the DSM-IV Task Force and of the Department of Psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine, and a prominent critic of the DSM-V development process, has voiced some of the most significant concerns regarding the changes being considered. He not only described the process as “unsupervised, poorly planned, secretive and disorganized,” but he also expressed concern that the proposed changes will lead to inaccurate, higher rates of diagnosis of mental disorders and, concomitantly, a lower threshold for diagnosis. Specifically, new diagnoses being introduced refer to conditions and characteristics that are extremely common and will lead to the inclusion of normal variants under the rubric of mental illness with tens of millions of newly identified false positives. His conclusion was that “the DSM-V suggestions display the peculiarly dangerous combination of non-specific and inaccurate diagnosis leading to unproven and potentially quite harmful treatments.” (Frances 2010)

Other critics have raised numerous concerns about financial and professional conflicts of interest, and the merit, validity and reliability of the new disorders which are being considered for inclusion. The planned field trials have also been criticized for being complicated and poorly designed.

This state of affairs is creating lively discussion among psychiatrists. Indeed, the American Psychiatric Association has made available a discussion space on its website and in its official publication.

What has been described above is not a surprise to medical orgonomy. It was bound to happen since psychiatry is in a quagmire and can’t see a way out of its present crisis. This crisis, involving both the theoretical foundation and the practice of psychiatry, is understandable when one steps outside the mechanistic paradigm psychiatry has fully and exclusively embraced over the last fifty years.

The History

For those unfamiliar with the background of the DSM and psychiatry, some history follows. The first edition of the DSM was introduced in 1952. The primary impetus for its creation and publication was the collection of data and statistical information. The publication of an official system of psychiatric diagnosis was in itself an unusual step in the history of medicine since the classification of illness had historically been the work of physicians and medical schools. The first edition of the DSM was influenced by traditional conceptualizations of mental illness and by psychoanalytic thinking. The term reaction was used throughout the text which represented the view that mental disorders were a reaction of the individual’s personality to psychological, social and biological factors. DSM-II was similar to DSM-I except the term reaction was eliminated.

A major change, however, occurred in 1980 with the publication of DSM-III. Theories about the etiology and development of mental illness were abandoned with an ensuing classification of psychiatric disorders that was meant to be neutral in this regard. This change resulted in the elimination of the concept of neurosis, as well as in the abandonment of the contribution of psychosexual and libidinal development in the etiology and pathogenesis of mental illness.

In fact, the intent was to avoid making any assumptions about the nature of mental illness and to describe disorders strictly on the basis of observation of symptoms. This amounted to the renunciation of interest in understanding what is behind the observed symptoms, signs or presentation of a condition. This renunciation doesn’t happen in any other area of medicine. The diagnosis of cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, neurological or metabolic disease, in fact, is not possible without a present understanding of the underlying mechanisms.

While claiming to be neutral with regard to etiology, DSM-III introduced unstated assumptions, beliefs and theoretical fragments that are active behind the text. It also didn’t consider the part played by the user of the diagnostic criteria who could easily introduce his or her own bias.[1]

Theoretical Problems

The major theoretical assumption behind this approach is that it is possible and necessary to leave the observer out of the equation as a precondition for the accurate and “scientific” identification of mental illness. The unquestionable belief behind the DSM system is that only by eliminating what is subjective is it possible to reach the objective, even when this objective is the most subjective—understanding mental life and its disturbances. Underlying this approach was “the linear causality model” dominating modern medicine.

The present state of psychiatry, however, shows clearly that this approach is doomed to failure. In fact, the result is the unwitting, inadvertent introduction of disorganized, sloppy, second-rate thinking. Confusion, contradictory assumptions and superficial thinking prevail.

The impossibility of describing and understanding mental illness without a theory is amplified by the fact that two major theoretical approaches have become prevalent in psychiatry since the publication of DSM-III. One approach is statistical and epidemiological and the other is the biochemical explanation of mental illness and psychic functions.

Statistics and epidemiology as tools of research have become methods and theories in their own right. On the other hand, biochemical explanations have become the new dogma—pretender to the throne, as if they hold the key to understanding mental illness—vulgarized under the heading of “biochemical imbalance.” (Pies 2011)

Both of these approaches are mechanistic and reductionistic, unable to grasp the essence of mental life because they exclude the role of the emotions and the meaning and function of psychopathology. The underlying motivation of the use of these approaches is to exclude the role played by sexual development and bioenergetic functioning in the development of mental illness. Refusing to acknowledge the existence of character and somatic armor as discovered and described by Wilhelm Reich, psychiatry cannot access the natural laws that govern psychic functioning.

Lacking this deeper understanding, psychiatry has no other choice than to group mental disorders by using statistical analysis and epidemiological studies in the hope that this will lead to the identification of underlying conditions. For all concerned, a tragic situation has been created. Unfortunately, nobody wants to see it, blinded as the profession is by the so-called scientific, “evidence- based” approach.

The DSM system currently tries to diagnose an entity, a disorder, by the presence of external characteristics, i.e., criteria. For example, “subject x has a, b, c and d symptoms and therefore meets the criteria for the diagnosis of disorder Y.” I invite anyone to think of the result if mankind had to identify a cat by looking for the presence of four legs, claws, fur and whiskers.

We recognize a cat because we apprehend it with an integrated act of perception. In medicine we know that somebody has hypertension or cirrhosis of the liver based on a thoughtful integration of observations. If we cannot proceed with a similar process of integrated perception in psychiatry, then we are and will be missing what is most important. Attempting to substitute this integrated and comprehensive thinking by listing a set of criteria that anyone, or for that matter a computer, can apply is not rational at all. The DSM system was the wrong approach when first introduced; its deficient and corrupt nature has finally been revealed decades later.

It is astounding that psychiatry has taken this path.[2] However, the outcome was inevitable given the desperate attempt to provide a medical and scientific foundation to mental illness once Reich was ostracized and his work blanketed with silence.

Biochemistry, including neurotransmitters, receptors and biochemical reactions, became a way out of the void, the lack of understanding, the impasse. Man, and his mental life, was reduced to and viewed as a complicated machine, devoid of emotions and free of responsibility for his behavior. Although its impact was tentative at first, the biochemical model soon became an unshakable, dominant truth with researchers, psychiatrists, physicians and the public. There was no room for discussion. Soon patients started to flock to the psychiatrist’s office stating that they had a “biochemical imbalance” and wanted the right medication to fix it.

This “medicalization” of psychiatry, the “new” truth, swept away knowledge accrued over the previous 75-100 years. Also, the practical experience of the psychiatrist no longer counted. Those who didn’t subscribe to the now popular biochemical model or who offered other viewpoints had no voice because their approach was not considered scientific, “evidence-based” or valid. Scientific debate was instead monopolized by the psychopharmacologist, the statistician and the epidemiologist.

Psychiatrists, trying to make a living, jumped on the psycho-pharmacology bandwagon. Later, it became evident that the psychiatric establishment was in bed with the pharmaceutical industry. (Pope 2008; Harris 2007) Investigators found that academic centers and well-known psychiatrists were receiving money from drug companies who were paying for and controlling research, and even writing papers published in peer-reviewed psychiatric journals. This is how a small minority of psychiatrists banked on their reputations and achieved the status of leaders in the field. They, in effect, dictated to the profession how to practice, often creating obstacles for the psychiatrist trying to treat patients in accord with his knowledge, experience and conscience.[3]

The Crisis

A wake-up call came in 2008 (Carey 2008), not from within the profession, but from the media, the political establishment and the public denouncing this state of affairs. Soon after, prominent psychiatrists and academics started to voice their own concerns.[4]

At this point doubts about the efficacy and benefit of drugs started to surface. (Kaplan 2011; Goleman 1989) Studies showing the lack of efficacy of antidepressants, hidden by industry until that time, were made public and discussed in the professional literature.

Psychiatry found itself in disarray. To make matters worse, disagreements concerning the planned publication of DSM-V came to the fore, causing public dismay and ridicule. Common, dysfunctional human behaviors were now being considered as disorders. For example, controversy was raised by the proposal to introduce a Hypersexuality Disorder, a Temper Dysfunctional Disorder with Dysphoria, and to consider Grief as a disorder. (Frances 2010) The number of disorders was proliferating almost by the day. Politics was heavily involved since each research group was actively lobbying for its own particular disorder.

A Way Out

Today, psychiatry is in a desperate situation, at risk of no longer being considered a serious discipline. (Bastiaens 2011; Moffic 2010; Pies 2008) The psychiatrist’s authority and role have been eroded and may soon be on the road to extinction, taken over by a host of collateral, non-medical professions and prescribers of medication. (Pies 2010)

Psychiatrists are trying to find a new lifeline. On one side they are looking at genetics and pharmacogenomics as the way of the future. On the other side, they are looking at “alternative” and “holistic” approaches in the hope of finding a way out. Orgonomy can see that this is just more of the same, shifting from one paradigm to the next without being able to go beyond the dualism of psyche and soma, of psychology and medicine. Refusing to acknowledge the existence of human armor and the therapy developed by Reich remains the roadblock that makes it impossible for psychiatry to look at the energetic functions of the living in a non-mechanical manner. The result is entrapment in the biochemical quagmire.

In order to maintain such mechanistic-materialistic thinking, psychiatry is obliged to embrace any new area of the biochemical and physical sciences that promises a solution. On the other hand, recognizing the existence of a deep split between the psychic and the somatic realm, psychiatry is looking to alternative, holistic approaches based on “mindfulness,” meditation and spirituality. In a recently published article Dr. Ronald Pies envisions what he calls, to avoid charges of “promiscuous eclecticism,” “polythetic pluralism.” In his opinion psychiatrists will reclaim and reinvent their role as holistic healers by not only prescribing pills but by using psychotherapy, poetry, comparative religion and philosophy. (Pies, March 2012) Again, mechanism on one side and mysticism on the other.

Indeed, if one looks at psychiatric publications, the next wave seems to be a conglomeration of different approaches leading to “anything goes” with utter confusion and disarray while making sure to provide a scientific legitimacy to the new construct. In truth, supporting a strictly biochemical approach has become untenable, while spirituality and mysticism are frowned upon in the medical profession as not scientific.

A compromise will be acceptable to most. The problem will be the lack of integration and synthesis, the inability to think in functional energetic terms and to grasp the common functioning principle. Psychiatry will not be able to step outside the mechanistic-mystical dualism of armored man and will continue to avoid recognition of the biological function of the orgasm, a basic manifestation of a specific energy that is active in the living and that follows non-mechanical laws. Reich described this avoidance as the expression of the most powerful “verboten” in the structure of armored man, the prohibition against touching the genital, “Do not touch it.”

Alternative and Complementary Approaches

The situation is cogently exemplified in an article on alternative therapies by James Lake, published in the Psychiatric Times a few years ago. (Lake 2008) The article deserves close scrutiny because in reading it one concludes that the author is either slowly trying to make his way toward Reich’s discoveries or is trying to avoid the name of Reich and the science of orgonomy at all costs. What else can one think when the author is talking of nontraditional forms of energy and of resolving the dualism between mind and body?

Lake starts by introducing the mind-body problem and recognizing the lack of consensus on a single best or most complete explanatory model of the mind-body interaction. He then mentions “the existence and involvement of different forms of energy and information in health” and the “convergence of classical and nonclassical paradigms” in this explanatory attempt. Recognizing the shortcomings of conventional allopathic medicine, he introduces non-allopathic modalities and non-Western healing traditions. Herbalists, homeopathic physicians, energy healers, and spiritual leaders make the list of the new healing professions. He goes further by mentioning treatments based on postulated “forms of energy or information” that have not yet been evaluated in Western-style research studies (Reiki, qigong, homeopathy).

From the theoretical point of view he proposes the “complex systems theory” as an alternative to the linear causality model. He states, “A corollary of this model is that although a particular symptom may have one apparent or “primary cause,” underlying causes probably vary significantly between individuals reporting similar symptoms as a consequence of each patient’s unique biochemical, genetic, social, psychological and possibly also energetic constitution.” [italics added]

He introduces theoretical concepts and tools like “path analysis” and the “analysis of latent variables.” He states, “The interdisciplinary field of functional medicine [italics added] views health and illness in relationship to informational changes in complex intracellular communication processes.” He considers effective treatments those that “modify the informational basis of psychiatric symptoms by taking into account complex interactions between mediators and the brain.”

In his search for a theoretical model he presents quantum mechanics and quantum field theory as possible explanatory models of the mind-body interaction and then talks about the part played by traditional forms of energy (electromagnetic, sound) as well as “nonclassical forms of energy and information” on the brain. In his own words, “Quantum brain dynamics is a non-classical model that uses quantum field theory to explain subtle dynamic characteristics of brain functioning, including postulated influences of non-classical forms of energy and information on the brain. It has been postulated that healing intention operates through non-local energetic interactions between the consciousness of the medical practitioner and the physical body or consciousness of the patient.” Read this as “energetic contact” so well known in orgonomy.

It is clear that he is talking of mass free energetic functions. One wonders what is the obstacle in the way of his talking about orgone energy and its biological functions. What is the obstacle to introducing the discovery that will provide all of these questions with the best fitting answer available to mankind? What makes it so difficult for these authors to move from the first part of the book Character Analysis to the second part? Again, we are dealing with the great verboten “Don’t touch it.”

The author, Lake, concludes the article with the following, “A future, more integrative psychiatry will thus emerge from a synthesis of disparate explanatory models of mental illness. More complete understanding of complex dynamic relationships between biological, somatic, energetic, informational, and possibly also spiritual processes associated with symptom formation will lead to more effective assessment and treatment approaches that address causes or meanings of symptoms at multiple interrelated hierarchic levels of body-brain-mind.” Unfortunately this will be an abstract and theoretical synthesis that has little chance of producing any new discoveries. A true synthesis can only be reached if one understands biopsychiatric functions from the point of view of the living including recognizing the function of the orgasm as a manifestation of basic bioenergetic functions described by Reich in the orgasm or life formula (tension®charge®discharge®relaxation). This unified all the functions of the organism and leads to the recognition of the identity and antithesis of psyche and soma.

Sadly, Reich and his work were ostracized and the expulsion of psychoanalysis from psychiatry followed soon afterwards in the attempt to extirpate forever any reminder of natural sexual functioning in man. Indeed, the expulsion of Reich from the International Psychoanalytic Association was an event of untold historical importance: it closed the door to the possibility of bridging the gap between psychology and biology in a naturalistic, scientific manner. The psychoanalytic model was much closer to an understanding of the essence of human mental life than any other known approach. It had its limitations but it understood something basic about the nature of psychic functioning.[5] Getting rid of psychoanalysis was like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As long as psychoanalysis remained within psychiatry, it was possible to move toward character analysis and medical orgone therapy, to read not just the first but the second part of Character Analysis. Once psychoanalysis was dismissed, the silence was deafening.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the problems of DSM-V are not the result of lack of organization, technical deficiencies or unsound procedures. The model is conceptually and scientifically corrupt and needs to be discarded. The consequences of the introduction of the DSM system have been devastating for psychiatry. It has trivialized psychiatry, impoverished clinical thinking, and created both the belief and the practice that it is enough to list criteria to understand psychiatric illness. It has made it possible for untrained and inexperienced individuals to make diagnoses and become “experts.” (Pies 2010) In the end it has reduced psychiatrists’ professionalism and rendered them subservient to administrators and non-medical professions. Indeed, the profession is no longer under the control of physicians. This is the high price that psychiatry has been willing to pay as long as it can continue to ignore Reich’s work and abide by the “Don’t touch it” verboten.

Sadly, the alleged so-called “benefit” of creating a universal language is trivial. What difference does having a common language make when one doesn’t know what one is talking about (i.e., “What is a cat?”). A common language in science is the result of deep understanding not arbitrary decisions made by committees proclaiming themselves scientific authorities.[6]

The crux of the problem, however, is that the diagnostic system doesn’t help the practicing psychiatrist with everyday clinical problems nor does it help him to understand the reality of a patient’s life and experience. Yes, it may have some benefits, but these benefits derive from the medical approach that was present before the DSM system was introduced. It comes from original medical thinking based on clinical observations and it is not specific to the DSM. Indeed, pre-DSM thinking was closer to natural functioning and was directed at finding the laws of psychic life.[7]

The DSM, on the other hand, relies mostly on quantitative and statistical tools and is not concerned with understanding the laws that govern psychic life. From the point of view of natural scientific and medical thinking the DSM is indeed a degeneration and regression. It is the result of a failure to understand life, health and sickness, and the renunciation of any attempt to do so.

It is no longer the time to talk about how to perfect the process of updating the DSM. For psychiatry it is time to dismiss the DSM for good and look outside the trap. (Pies, February 2012) Medical orgonomy offers the only rational, natural scientific way out of the quagmire. Tragically, official psychiatry has rejected functional energetic thinking while, nonetheless, beginning to talk of mechanistic-mystical, non-conventional and alternative treatments.

Although it may appear as a challenging, even daunting task, the time has come to start voicing this painful truth. If we don’t, the profession will continue its headlong plunge toward destruction, creating in the process another tragedy for humanity and a new monster.

References

Bastiaens, L. 2011. Poor Practice, Managed Care, and Magic Pills. Have We Created a Mental Health Monster? Psychiatric Times, April 29. (with specific reference to Bipolar Disorder)

Carey, C. 2008. Psychiatric Association Faces Senate Scrutiny Over Drug Industry Ties. New York Times, July 12.

Frances, A. 2010. Opening the Pandora’s Box: The 19 Worst Suggestions for DSM-V. Psychiatric Times, February 11.

____. 2010. DSM-V Temper Dysregulation: Good Intentions, Bad Solutions. Psychiatric Times, April 21.

Goleman, D. 1989. Critics Challenge Reliance on Drugs in Psychiatry. New York Times, October 17.

Harris, G. 2007. Psychiatrists Top List in Drug Makers Gifts. New York Times, June 27.

Kaplan, A. 2011. Antidepressants: Life Savers or Active Placebo. New York Times, October 5.

Moffic, S. 2010. How to End a Psychiatric Epidemic: The Redemption of Psychiatry. Psychiatric Times, June 11.

Pies, R. 2008. Through a Glass, Darkly? A Look at Psychiatry Future. Psychiatric Times, February 11.

____. 2010. We are all DSM Diagnosticians—We are not all Physicians. Psychiatric Times, February 11.

____. 2011. Doctor, Is My Mood Disorder Due to a Chemical Imbalance? Psychiatric Times, August 11.

____. 2012. Beyond DSM-V, Psychiatry Needs a “Third Way”. Psychiatric Times, February 8.

____. 2012. How American Psychiatry Can Save Itself. Psychiatric Times, March 1.

Pope, T. 2008. Psychiatry Handbook Linked to Drug Industry. New York Times, May 06.

[1]
It didn’t foresee, for example, the appropriation and use of criteria out of context for the diagnosis of mental disorders. This appropriation has resulted in overdiagnosis, simplification of the diagnostic process, and the creation of multiple new disorders based on any and every symptom or any perceived deviation from the norm.

[2]
At a deeper level, however, this can be understood as a desperate attempt to run away from the natural function of sexuality and its biopsychiatric implications as described by Reich.

[3]
This author has found himself many times working in hospital settings under pressure from medical directors and other staff to prescribe powerful psychotropic medications to children or adults for reasons that had nothing to do with the well-being of the patient.

[4]
See statements by Drs. Jerome L. Avorn, Jeffrey A. Lieberman, Stefan P. Kruszewski. Robert Rosenbeck, Daniel J. Carlat in “Side Effects May Include Lawsuits” by Duff Wilson, New York Times, October 2, 2010.

[5]
Freud’s original thinking was rooted in natural science and based on energetic functioning.

[6]
Only clear thinking leads to correct terminology and common understanding. Thinking is distorted by the presence of armor in the ocular segment.

[7]
Original scientific thinking which grasps the essence of a phenomenon is always functional.

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