Sexual Disorders are Not Illnesses (Part 2)

In my last post I described frotteurism, which the APA lists as one of their mental disorders/illnesses. The central theme of this blog is that there are no mental illnesses – that mental illnesses are essentially psychiatrists’ ways of conceptualizing ordinary human problems for the purposes of consolidating turf and legitimizing the use of drugs to alter people’s behavior and mood. This is not to say that the behaviors in question are not problems. They certainly are. Frotteurism is a case in point. A man who uses the crowd cover of trains and buses to press his genitals against non-consenting females clearly has a problem. The question is: how can we explain this behavior? Why does he do it? ...

July 21, 2010 · PhilHickeyPhD

Sexual Disorders Are Not Illnesses

The central theme of this blog is that almost all the so-called mental illnesses listed in the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual are nothing more than the ordinary everyday challenges of human existence. The psychiatric profession has “elevated” these problems to the status of disorders and illnesses to justify and legitimize their involvement in these areas, and in particular to justify the use of drugs to alter people’s moods and actions. Psychiatry – once a respectable helping profession – has degenerated into something little better than drug pushing. The real winners, of course, are the pharmaceutical companies, who use the psychiatrists and other mental health professionals to promote the widespread drugging of the population. The DSM’s so-called sexual disorders represent a particularly blatant example of psychiatric invention. ...

June 28, 2010 · PhilHickeyPhD