Everyone’s Villain

The American Psychology association is a villain just like any other. You can’t blame them for everything, but you can say, “There’s enough there to get angry, sure.” The fact is, they’ve been doing their very best with a short stack of shitballs that is the complexity of human behavior. And they’ve done it all in such a short span, it’s hard to believe they’ve come this far.

But you also want to take a moment and say, “Hey guys. Did you really think that homosexuality was a mental disorder? And was there anybody else watching over your shoulder when you let thousands of people receive electroshock therapy?

The mistakes they make, perhaps even more than any other medical organization, are more apparent and more embarrassing. If the AMA gets its diagnostic manual wrong for white blood cell count in an adult, HIV positive male, you spend years after cleaning up the dead before you realize they were the root of the problem.

But if the APA calls the wrong boy autistic, you read about it in the papers.

The depths of the DSM come some pretty interesting findings. If only they were not so deep. One wonders (I wonder) how much it is possible for a person to take control of their own mental health, in the way that religious zealots want to control their own bodies through prayer. Perhaps these senseless killings would be impossible if only mental health services were more available across the country, we’re fond of saying up in New York.

But what if that’s just part of the fabric of our brains? What if it’s inescapable?