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DSM-V CONTROLS YOUR MIND From Page 9 Personality disorders are set for a sweeping re-organization. The ten disorders, including such familiar names as borderline and antisocial personalAutism, that media darling of mental ity disorder, will be replaced by five disorders, will see important changes. Autistic disorder and Asperger’s syndrome subtypes on a sliding scale. Although will be folded in with two other disorders the new criteria will likely help reduce overlap between disorders, they are into the broader grouping of “autistic spectrum disorder.” The change reflects a growing trend towards considering such disorders as facets of a syndrome related in cause and scope. essentially changes of phrasing. Others, however, are likely to make headlines.
In a conceptual change, Substance-Related Disorders is slated to become Addiction and Related Disorders. The distinction is subtle but crucial. Pathological gambling, formerly categorized as a problem of impulse control, is now one of addiction. The legal ramifications are worth considering. As addicts, are pathological gamblers less culpable for their actions? Are casinos responsible as enablers? Lawyers will certainly have an easier time convincing juries that gambling addiction is real with the weight of psychiatric opinion behind them. Other unconventional addictions are not expected yet, but the door is open for addiction to shopping or video games to appear in another fifteen years.
inmates are sociopaths. Though schizophrenia is one of the most researched and cherished mental illnesses, its family of disorders may too go under the knife. The subtypes, such as paranoid and catatonic schizophrenia, are somewhat arbitrary, and are expected to be cut. The rare and fascinating folie à deux, or shared psychotic disorder, lacks use as a diagnosis, and will fade into legend. Disorders new to the DSM-V may include hoarding, binge eating, restless leg syndrome, and hypersexuality. More tentative are seasonal affective disorder, Internet addiction, and the intriguing “male-to-eunuch gender identity disorder.”
a bit complicated for a general public that has trouble telling psychosis from psychopathy. A good public understanding of personality disorders is vital – one figure often kicked around suggests that twenty percent of prison
The DSM-V will likely have no sea changes—psychiatry is past her formative years. It is more significant as a reflection of what is and isn’t mainstream in abnormal psychology. Given the politicization of autism, depression, and their brethren, that’s a bit more important than the average academic debate.
IDEOLOGY: THE SECOND FRONT From Page 12 has been shown. The political philosophy of the CCP seems to be this: the ends justify the means. It may be that many officials within the current Chinese government sincerely mean to do good by their people, and that they have in many cases done real good. But the mechanism by which even legitimate policies are carried out is corrupted, and its capability circumscribed, by its inherently undemocratic nature. Certainly, many examples of cooperation appeared in the Cold War. Neither
the U.S. nor the U.S.S.R. wanted to be economically marginalized or incinerated; through bilateral treaties both sides often benefited from greater security in the nuclear realm and other areas dealing with certain “rational” conflicts. Yet there was no meaningful ideological compromise between Washington and Moscow – neither could there be when the two countries’ respective political systems were founded on entirely different understandings of humanity and its relationship to the government. We will see some degree of compromise and cooperation in the economic field with China in the years to come, and we ought
to seek this out in good faith. We ought especially to remember Eisenhower’s words in his 1953 speech, “The Chance for Peace”: “No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.” To vilify the Chinese as people – to blame them in any way for the abuses committed in their name – would be both unfair and factually wrong. But, emphatically, we must also recognize the fundamental limitations of where discussions with the Chinese Communist Party as it stands today can take us.