SHADOW OF THE DSM

To make my point, I sometimes ask my friend and colleague, "If the bible is the word of god, would you use it in your studies?" Usually, the answer goes something like this, "Yes, I would if it was the word of god." My response in waiting is, "So why don't you use it?" "Because it isn't a reliable text," replies my good ole' friend. "Exactly! You wouldn't because even though to the public the bible is portrayed as an accurate and infallible text, in private, namely, close examination, the bible is filled with contradictions and discrepancies, enough to dismantle any argument you use it for. In other words, if the bible is flawed, so is your position on any subject matter."

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The DSM is portrayed as an empirically-based text, yet it is far from it. In educating the public, I provide clips from history on how mainstream psychiatry developed and what procedures were used to build the DSM. It isn't to discourage someone from seeking mental health treatment, but it is to question  the current verdict power it has been given. When there have been prejudices or biases against gender and sexual identity, the Black community, Native Nations, Latin communities, and women, the DSM is already an unattractive resource. When disorders are created with less than conclusive research, that is, other research cannot replicate its findings, the DSM has become an unreliably decisive resource. And when traditional psychiatry claims that mental disorders have a biological cause in the brain that cannot be conclusively demonstrated ("etiology is unknown"), the DSM's main artery is severed.

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Unlike "Cultural Psychiatry" (Karen Eriksen and Victoria E. Kress, Beyond the DSM Story) where each village, tribe, and population's ontology and epistemology is given equal say, mainstream psychiatry has constructed the DSM that is more than ready to dismiss any view that doesn't conform. And in the case of experiencers, mainstream psychiatry pathologizes credible and functional individuals and groups for mentioning some encounter that cannot be reduced to a material form of knowing. 

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Psychosis

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There are ways outside of the DSM to ensure that a client is not mentally suffering, which in the world of experiencers often includes the presence of psychosis. Psychosis is poorly defined by the DSM, but it is described by its strong western epistemological bent to dismiss the immaterial. I carefully hold to three definitions. Each one moves away from the theory that psychosis is a biological disease. The first defines psychosis within the context of unusual phenomena. A person undergoes an actual experience or set of experiences that prove overwhelming. This shift activates in sometimes extreme form imagery, sound, perception, sensory info, and emotion derived from or related to the actual event. Chaos and blurriness from living between two worlds can make it difficult for the client to distinguish current reality from a shift into expanded Consciousness. Symptoms, which have an intelligence to them (Danielle Knof and Michael Selzer, Breakdown Breakthrough), can serve to convert the madness into a transformational and meaning-making narrative. The mystic's experiencing God is an example.

 

The second definition appears to be related to an actual event but is not. The experience is overwhelming and can prove to be dizzy. Imagery, sound, perception, sensory data, and affect are more random in nature. However, symptoms can serve to convert madness into a transformational and meaning-making narrative with the help of a therapist and community.

 

The third definition has more to do with a quiet version of madness (Knof and Selzer). We all fall into this category. We all live with illusions, projections, and scripts of our world and ourselves. We bounce in and out of a reality in which we 'see' and 'hear' people and things. When I trained in a psychiatric hospital for 9 months, I remember a saying: "Patients are like us, only more so." Nevertheless, most of us function well and, strangely enough, live a relatively happy life.​​

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Unfortunately, mainstream psychiatry and psychology give a description rather than a definition of what constitutes psychosis. Moreover, they place themselves in a position to determine which content is considered psychotic and which is "normal". While psychotic material can be wild, the bizarre nature of the narrative does not always mean something is completely hallucinatory. Is the testimony of a whole village seeing the mother Mary just a psychotic episode? Is the report by some 60 children seeing a UFO just a set of symptoms?

 

Mainstream psychiatry and psychology measure the content of psychosis from a narrow, material epistemology.​Seemingly unaware of its oppressive nature, they are driven by their own prejudices to determine normalcy for countless cultural and spiritual traditions. Mainstream psychiatry's need to preserve a supposed medical model of mental illness forces them to continue using what I call "Epistemological leverage". Sharing similarities and differences on how to see and know the world is always a worthy conversation. Telling millions of people that "our" way of knowing is the correct way to understand reality is an ethical dilemma. ​