A Cure for Character

Townhall.com ^ | February 28, 2010 | George Will

[Kaslin]

WASHINGTON -- Peter De Vries, America's wittiest novelist, died 17 years ago but his discernment of this country's cultural foibles still amazes. In a 1983 novel, he spotted the tendency of America's therapeutic culture to medicalize character flaws:

"Once terms like identity doubts and midlife crisis become current," De Vries wrote, "the reported cases of them increase by leaps and bounds." And: "Rapid-fire means of communication have brought psychic dilapidation within the reach of the most provincial backwaters, so that large metropolitan centers and educated circles need no longer consider it their exclusive property, nor preen themselves on their special malaises."

Life is about to imitate De Vries' literature, again. The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychiatry's encyclopedia of supposed mental "disorders," is being revised. The 16 years since the last revision evidently were prolific in producing new afflictions. The revision may aggravate the confusion of moral categories.

Today's DSM defines "oppositional defiant disorder" as a pattern of "negativistic, defiant, disobedient and hostile behavior toward authority figures." Symptoms include "often loses temper," "often deliberately annoys people" or "is often touchy." DSM omits this symptom: "is a teenager."

[G Larry]

This practice excuses bad behavior and creates a self-perpetuating market for shrinks.

Get religion, learn the difference between right and wrong and practice becoming a better human being.

[Spok]

In days of yore, dictators declared themselves divine and called dissent heresy; now it’s a mental disorder. Interestingly, ‘oppositional defiant disorder’ describes Marxist revolutionaries to a ‘t’, but I suspect it’s never applied to them.

[HP8753]

Page 1 should state “ Liberalism is the most prevelent form of Mental Disorder in America”

[CharlesThe Hammer]

The doctors and attorneys who dream up these “disorders” and “syndromes” are laughing all the way to the bank. I remember my chagrin when, as a teacher and coach, I was informed that one of my players had Oppositional Defiance Disorder, or ODD. I thought to myself, “ODD? You’ve got to be kidding! And here I thought “Johnny” was just an A number 1 a$$h!&*!” The kid would show up late to practice, cursed and complained about every directive, and refused to wear his baseball cap. We might have been able to straighten this guy out with some old fashioned coaching, but instead, we built a dossier on him and categorized his offenses as a “danger to himself and others”. He never played a single inning. The permissiveness of his ODD classification insured his exile because his presence, under the required modifications, would have destroyed the team.