EDUCATION
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The difficult-to-control male child is certainly not a new phenomenon, but attempts to give him a medical diagnosis are the product of modern psychology and psychiatry. At first psychiatrists called hyperactivity a brain disease. When no brain disease could be found, they changed it to βminimal brain diseaseβ (MBD). When no minimal brain disease could be found, the profession transformed the concept into βminimal brain dysfunction.β When no minimal brain dysfunction could be demonstrated, the label became βattention deficit disorder.β Now itβs just assumed to be a real disease, regardless of the failure to prove it so. βBiochemical imbalanceβ is the code word, but thereβs no more evidence for that than there is for actual brain disease.β Alan Larson, a former secretary of the Oregon Federation of Independent Schools, criticized the expanding diagnosis of attention deficit disorder (ADD) and was an outspoken critic of the indiscriminate use of drugs, proclaiming, β[T]he labeling of children with ADD is not because of a problem the kids have; it is because of a problem teachers who cannot tolerate active children have.β According to John Cornwell, author of Hitlerβs Scientists, the center of psychoanalysis shifted from Germany to the United States after the war. β[M]any of the homegrown analysts were German trained,β he noted. This charge was echoed by Dr. Thomas Roeder, Volker Kubillus, and Anthony Burwell in their book Psychiatristsβthe Men Behind Hitler. βIn the period since 1971,β they wrote, βchild and adolescent psychiatry developed completely along the theoretical and methodological lines developed by its Nazi-era founders.β The influx of Nazi-trained psychiatrists after World War II, particularly in the military and intelligence fields, has produced a blossoming of psychological disorders. The American Psychiatric Association, in its 1952 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM), defined only 112 mental disorders. By the publication of DSM-IV in 1994, the number had grown to 374. βToday, though psychiatry may still be suspect among the public, it has won over both government and the media. The profession and its treatments inundate talk shows, magazines, and the front pages of our newspapers,β wrote Bruce Wiseman, the U.S. national president of the Citizens