The Dream as an Existential Message: The Beggar Woman and the Waif

Betty Cannon, Ph.D. works with a colleague volunteer. Produced by the Boulder Psychotherapy Institute, www.boulderpsych.com. Boulder, Colorado. Applied Existential Psychotherapy interlaces Gestalt and other experiential therapies with the insights of contemporary existential and psychodynamic approaches.

Candidate Statements for the 2012 Election to the Division 32 Executive Board

PRESIDENT-ELECT

Brent Dean Robbins, Ph.D.

Candidate Statement for Brent Dean Robbins, Ph.D.

I am very honored to be nominated for President of the Society for Humanistic Psychology. Over the years, I have made the Society my professional home, and have formed many wonderful friendships through my involvement in this organization. My commitment to the Society is evident in the amount of time and effort I have put into volunteer work to help ensure the success of this organization.

I have served the Society in many capacities: Currently I am Secretary, and prior to that I served as Member-at-Large. Since the 2^nd Annual Conference, I have served as Conference Chair and/or Conference Coordinator, and over time, the conference has become essential for the financial viability of the organization. The Conference under my leadership has steadily grown in attendance with each annual event. It has also continued to make a sizeable profit each year. I edit the Society blog and help to manage the Society’s Facebook page. I have also served as Membership Chair of the Society, as well as a variety of other capacities. Most recently, along with David Elkins and Sarah Kamens, I helped to spearhead the very successful campaign to reform the DSM-5.

My professional accomplishments also qualify me for this respected leadership role. I am a recipient of the Society’s Harmi Carari Early Career Award as well as the Jourard Student Award. I am Director of the Psychology Program and Associate Professor of Psychology at Point Park University, and Editor-in-Chief of Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts. I serve on the Editorial Board of a variety of humanistic-friendly journals including The Humanistic Psychologist, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, International Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, and International Journal of Existential Psychology and Psychotherapy. In addition, I have published dozens of peer-reviewed articles on humanistic and existential theory, qualitative research, and mixed methods studies which explicitly aim to advance humanistic theory and practice. Most recently, with Sharna Olfman, I co-edited the volume, Drugging Our Children: How Profiteers Are Pushing Antipsychotics on Our Children and What We Can Do To Stop It (Praeger, 2012) and, forthcoming, The Legacy of R.D. Laing (Trivium, 2012).

As President of the Society for Humanistic Psychology, I will work to continue advancing the central theme of Louis Hoffman’s Presidency, which will focus on increasing diversity in the Society. To under-gird this effort, my Presidency will emphasize the social ethics and humanistic values which are the distinct, distinguishing characteristic of the humanistic vision of psychology. Thank you for your time and attention.

DIVISION REPRESENTATIVE TO APA COUNCIL

Brent Potter, Ph.D.

I am grateful to be nominated as your candidate.

I have been working as a clinician for the past 19 years with vulnerable and underserved populations. I have also served as an interlocutor between various organizations responsible for the development and implementation of policy informing quality of care. While I have experience in teaching and research, my primary orientation in humanistic psychology is working directly with people. I work towards promoting the psychological growth of individuals, families, organizations, and communities through supporting their own innovative and self-motivated efforts. My work in these areas has classified me as a Child Mental Health Specialist and a Multicultural Mental Health Specialist for Native American and African American populations in Washington State. As an interlocutor, I have worked with people representing numerous organizations on how best to unite as a community to provide the highest level of quality care in mental health services. In doing so, I have helped diminish the hierarchy of ‘professional’ and ‘patient’, cultivating a client-driven strength-based approach to partner with people in fostering recovery.

I will use my passion about humanistic psychology, bringing it to my goals as I work to: (1) be the voice of Division 32 membership, representing you and your concerns to the APA; (2) represent APA back to Division 32, keeping you informed beyond impersonal publications, listservs, blogs, etc. I would be honored to serve as your Council Representative. Let us work together and continue to contribute to social responsibility, psychotherapy, education, research, organization, and change.

DIVISION REPRESENTATIVE TO APA COUNCIL

Scott Churchill, Ph.D.

Scott D. Churchill, Candidate for Council Representative

Background: Scott D. Churchill (PhD – Duquesne, 1984) serves as Professor and Graduate Program Director in Psychology at the University of Dallas and has a 30-year history with the APA and with Division 32. He has held several positions on the Executive Board over the past 20 years: Awards Chair, Membership Chair, Human Science Chair, Science Directorate Liaison, Education Directorate Liaison, Convention Program Chair (2004, 2009, 2011), President (2004-2005), Journal Editor (since 2006), and Council Representative (since 2010). He was advanced to APA Fellow status in 2002 and also currently serves on the Fellows Committee, the Early Career Awards Committee, the Program Committee, and as Chair of the Sydney Jourard Student Award Committee. Outside of Division 32, he is a Fellow of Divisions 1, 5, 24, and 56 and is a current nominee for the APA's Committee on Division/APA Relations (CODAPAR). During the past decade, he has three times served as a substitute Council Representative for Divisions 24 and 32.

Candidate’s Statement: During my first term on Council, I have developed relationships not only with other Council members and APA Presidents, but also with the Executive Director of the Science Directorate, with whom I've been able to promote the interests of humanistic science in an otherwise “STEM Discipline” climate. Forging new alliances with members of the Board of Directors, APA staff, and Caucus leaders (in particular, the “Treatment and Practice” Caucus and the “LGBT” Caucus), as well as participating in the Divisions for Social Justice side-meetings, I have worked hard to collaborate with others on their agendas while encouraging them to lend a sympathetic ear to the concerns of the Society for Humanistic Psychology. Among the recent policy issues on which I have focused my attention are Treatment Guidelines, the PENS Report on torture, and the current movement within the APA toward psychology being defined exclusively as a STEM (Science-Technology-Engineering-Math) discipline, which threatens the very existence of humanistic psychology.

I would like to continue this work for a second term as your Council Representative. If re-elected, I will build on the above-mentioned relationships to further the interests of humanistic psychology with the APA. Specifically, I will continue to (a) advocate for humanistic values in APA Council policy decisions; (b) advance epistemological diversity and promote support for qualitative inquiry within the APA; and (c) continue to network with other Council members while serving as your voice and proxy when voting on policy. Building upon my long and nuanced history with Division 32, I feel confident that I can represent our shared values and lobby effectively for the best interests of the Division within the greater APA.

MEMBER-AT-LARGE OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Shawn Rubin, PsyD

Dear SHP Members,

I am proud of my service as Member at Large of APA Division 32 over the past three years, and I am seeking another term to continue our efforts in helping the Society — and Humanistic Psychology around the world — realize its great potential to heal the world.

My first term has given me the fulfilling opportunity to develop close working relationships with the outstanding leaders of our Society. It has also allowed me to serve as a mentor to our early and mid-career members, and interact with the next generation of students in a variety of ways — at our annual conferences, as Editor of the Newsletter (2008-2011), and as Chair of the Hospitality Suite Program (2010 & 2011). I am also proud to have been a strong supporter of the Society's LGBT Position Statements and DSM-5 Campaign initiatives.

As Chair of the PsyD Program at Saybrook University, I am acutely aware of the issues and challenges facing Humanistic schools in the academic and training settings. In addition, my upcoming role as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology will enable me to illuminate many exciting areas of innovation within our movement and strengthen bonds with kindred spirits.

I would very much like to sustain the momentum I have worked to build as Member at Large, strategizing responses to the political and economic challenges we face and against which we must take a stand.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Shawn Rubin, PsyD

MEMBER-AT-LARGE OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Nathaniel Granger, PsyD

I, Nathaniel Granger, Jr., PsyD, am honored for the nomination within Division 32, the Society of Humanistic Psychology, as a Member at Large. In addition to serving on its Recruitment and Retention Task Force, it is with great enthusiasm that I am a member of Division 32 in that it supports a personal belief: "An assumption unusual in psychology today is that the subjective human being has an important value which is basic; that no matter how he may be labeled and evaluated he is a human person first of all, and most deeply" Carl Rogers, 1962. It is on this premise that I serve Division 32, not only in theory, but practice. After all, Humanistic

Psychology is a value orientation that holds a hopeful, constructive view of human beings and of their substantial capacity to be self-determining. This conviction leads to an effort to enhance such distinctly human qualities as choice, creativity, the interaction of the body, mind and spirit, and the capacity to become more aware, free, responsible, life-affirming and trustworthy. It is not simply another therapeutic modality, but a way of life.

Additionally, a personal embodiment and reenactment of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech has rendered me desired and sought after speaker for various forums relative to diversity and equal rights.

Again, it is with honor and humility I accept this nomination, and will continue to serve Division 32 with the tenacity it has served others.

Sincerely,

Nathaniel Granger, Jr., PsyD

MEMBER-AT-LARGE OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Maureen O'Hara, Ph.D.

Statement for Election as Member at large.

Maureen O’Hara, Ph. D.

Department of psychology

National University, La Jolla.

I ask for your support for election as Member at Large to the Executive Board of the Society for Humanistic Psychology. I have previously served the Division with two terms as Member at Large, conference chair, member and chair of the Fellows Committee, and President. So why do I want to serve once more?

The job isn’t done. I have never lost my conviction that humanistic psychology has a role beyond clinical practice. In its methods, theories, epistemologies, and ways of being, humanistic psychology offers a healing corrective to a world that has grown toxic and inimical to the life force. The driving spirit of our discipline is a deeply radical belief that psychology should be about humanization; creating the conditions whereby persons and their communities may move toward full expression of their humanity. While I think it is important that our division work inside APA to stave off the hegemonic efforts to reduce our field to a branch of behavioral medical science, I think we also need to move beyond the boundaries of clinical psychology into a wider role as cultural leaders. In my view, it is time to be better known for what we are not only for what we are not. We are living in a time when huge threats are looming—climate change, widening gap between haves and have nots, injustice, political divisiveness, wars, attacks on women’s freedoms—you know the litany. The establishment response is ever more fear based—tighten borders, standardize testing, more precise diagnosis of “pathologies,” outcomes-based everything, defensive over regulation, which in my view just make things worse. The humanistic response is to seek the creative edge, to trust human aspiration and to create the conditions where people can be authors of their own lives. Along with concern for practice, graduate education and philosophy, I want our division to speak about the big issues to a wide public. If I am elected I will find ways to do that whenever and wherever I can. Thank you for your consideration.

MEMBER-AT-LARGE OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Richard Bargdill, Ph.D.

This is a time of excitement and concern for Humanistic Psychology. There has been a great burst of excitement, youth and energy that I have witnessed within the Society during my first term as member-at-large. During that short time, I have been able to help initiate the Division’s Facebook page and the “student ambassadors” program. A Student Ambassador is a liaison between our division and graduate schools in Humanistic Psychology. Moreover, as membership chair, I have meet some wonderful people who are enjoying our great professional opportunities at the Division’s Annual Conferences and participating in the activities at the Division 32 Hospitality Suite at the APA conventions. I’m thrilled about the activism that the Society has been re-engaged in. There is the extremely important DSM5 Open Letter/petition and the position statements on the PENS report and on LGBT issues. I have heard a number of members and students say this activism has really made them proud of our division. These are exciting, important, vital times, indeed! There are concerns out there too. Ones that we all need to be vigilant about: concerns about Treatment Guidelines the APA is developing—an attempt, possibly to standardized treatment in a way that might exclude many forms of humanistic styled therapy; concerns about accreditation for graduate programs in the humanistic psychologies; and concerns about graduate students internships crisis. If I’m re-appointed to the board, I hope to continue to help address the above concerns as well as any others that members bring forth.

MEMBER-AT-LARGE OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Krishna Kumar, Ph.D.

V. Krishna Kumar, PhD,
Candidate, Member-at-Large for Division 32

I would be honored and privileged to continue to serve as a Member-at-large of the Executive Committee of Division 32. I had the pleasure of serving as Co-Chair of Division’s Annual APA Program in 2008 and again in 2010. I have truly enjoyed working with the members of the Division 32 Executive Committee and would welcome the opportunity to continue to work with them for advancing its goals and role within the APA and outside of APA. I have been a member of APA since 1976 and an elected fellow in Division 32 and six other divisions. I am a full professor in the Department of Psychology. I have been an active researcher over many years with over a hundred scholarly published works. Thank you for your consideration and support.

Society for Humanistic Psychology holds national conference at Point Park University March 29-April 1

Point Park University will host the Society for Humanistic Psychology’s fifth annual conference in Pittsburgh March 29–April 1, 2012. “Person, Consciousness and Community” will bring together members of the Society, a division of the American Psychological Association, to discuss theoretical and practical applications of considering the person in the context of community. The public is invited to select panel discussions and events.

Early career psychologists and young faculty members and scholars are expected in record numbers, as the Society for Humanistic Psychology continues to see increasing interest from professionals early in their professions.

“Young practitioners are starting with a humanistic understanding of the person,” says Brent Dean Robbins, Ph.D., coordinator of Point Park University’s psychology program, and co-chair of the conference with Robert McInerney, Ph.D.

“There’s a ‘renaissance’ in humanistic and existential psychology going on, and the annual conference reflects this. There will be much youthful energy and new voices being heard as young professionals come and present their work.”

The conference’s keynote speakers will be:

Isaac Prilleltensky, Ph.D.
Constance Fischer, Ph.D.
Robert Stolorow, Ph.D.

A number of the symposiums and panel discussions will be open to the public, including these being held in the GRW Theatre on Point Park’s downtown Pittsburgh campus:

Drugging our Children: How Profiteers are Pushing Antipsychotics on our Youngest, and What We Can Do to Stop It (Thurs., March 29, 4 p.m.)
How and Why to Treat Patients Without Psychiatric Drugs (Fri., March 30, 10 a.m.)
The Legacy of R.D. Laing (Fri., March 30, 1 p.m.)
A Most Dangerous Manual: Division 32 Presidential Symposium (Fri., March 30, 5 p.m.)
Celebrating the Women of Humanistic Psychology (Sat., March 31, 9 a.m.)
Martin Luther King's Vision of the Beloved Community and Humanistic Psychology: Common Ground (Sat., March 31)

All sessions emphasize the theme of community and the importance of healing relationships in the lives of individuals and in therapeutic environments.

“The emphasis on community is a natural extension of humanistic psychology because of its strength-based, prevention-focused emphasis on the well-being and thriving of persons,” says Robbins.

The Point Park psychology professor co-authored the Society for Humanistic Psychology’s open letter about proposed revisions to the “bible” of American psychiatry, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The letter and online petition outlines concerns that the revisions could result in an increasing number of individuals being labeled as having mental health disorders, and given powerful psychiatric drugs, for behaviors that are within normal ranges. The proposed revisions are the subject of A Most Dangerous Manual: Division http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif32 Presidential Symposium during the conference.

A select number of students in Point Park University’s psychology program and Confluence Psychology Alliance will present posters at the conference.

The complete schedule for “Person, Consciousness and Community” is available on the conference website. For more information, email Brent Dean Robbins or Robert McInerney.

Frans de Waal: Do Monkeys Express Moral Outrage?

Putting a Human Face to Torture

The Human Rights Institute at Kean University premieres Doctors of the Dark Side



Garieka Godfrey at The Cougar's Byte reports:

On Tuesday, March 27, 2012, the Human Rights Institute at Kean University will present the premiere of the film, Doctors of the Dark Side from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the New Jersey Center for Science, Technology, and Mathematics [STEM] building auditorium.

The film exposes the role that physicians and psychologists played in devising, supervising, and covering up the torture of detainees in United States controlled military prisons. It contains interviews of doctors, psychologists, military officers, former detainees, and attorneys to tell the stories of four detainees and how significant health care professionals have been in the physical and psychological torture of detainees.

According to the website for Physicians for Human Rights, "Doctors of the Dark Side gives a human face to an issue that many do not want to confront: medical professionals implicitly or explicitly authorized the torture that occurred at Guantanamo, including practices such as isolation, sleep deprivation, forced nakedness, severe humiliation and degradation, and sensory deprivation." The film is earning great reviews at initial screenings, with Dr. Martha Davis as producer/ http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifdirector, who spent four years investigating the controversy and produced the award-winning documentary. The team includes Oscar-winners Mark Jonathan Harris, who wrote the documentary; Mercedes Ruehl as the narrator; Emmy-winner and director of photography, Lisa Rinzler; and editor, M. Trevino.

Following the film, Dr. Davis -- along with a panel of Kean faculty -- will discuss the implications of the message of the film. Dr. Denis Klein, director of the M.A. in Holocaust and Genocide studies; Dr. Jennifer Lerner of the Psychology Department program in clinical and school psychology,; and Dr. Virginia Fitzsimons of the department of nursing will be on the panel.

To view a preview of the film visit http://www.doctorsofthedarkside.com/. For more information, please contact Janine Rivera at rivejani@kean.edu.

Patrick McGorry Takes an About-Turn on Treatment of Early Psychosis in the Young

Amy Cordeory at Western Advocate reports:

Concerns about the overmedication of young people and rigid models of diagnosis have led the architect of early intervention in Australian psychiatry, Patrick McGorry, to abandon the idea pre-psychosis should be listed as a new psychiatric disorder.

The former Australian of the Year had previously accepted the inclusion of pre-psychosis - a concept he and colleagues developed - in the international diagnostic manual of mental disorders, or DSM, which is being updated this year.

Professor McGorry has been part of a team researching pre- and early-psychosis, and his work in the latter helped secure a massive $222.4 million Commonwealth funding injection for Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centres across Australia.

They have found symptoms such as having some delusions or disorganised speech and thought can predict psychosis.

But he believes young people at risk of psychosis are already over-medicated and inclusion in the manual could worsen the problem. "I think it's a valid point to be concerned about the harms particularly in places like America," he said. "I think probably I have given a bit more weight to that argument now".

He said 27 per cent of patients in his ultra-high risk clinics had to be taken off anti-psychotic medications prescribed by GPs.

Professor McGorry has been heavily criticised for his work in early psychosis by doctors who believe it will lead to overmedication.

"I certainly didn't push for [pre-psychosis] to be included although I got panned as if that was what I was trying to do," he said. ''I just didn't want 15 years of progress to be lost".

Allen Frances, the chairman of the taskforce that created the current DSM and a critic of the proposals for the new manual, proposal to include pre-psychosis, currently called attenuated psychosis, in the manual that inspired his campaign.

"It was a very specific moment, it was in May of 2009," he said. "I realised the ark DSM5 was taking would be so far off the mark that it would be irresponsible not to say anything."

Professor McGorry said it was his focus on developing staging models in psychiatry, similar to those seen in other areas of medicine such as cancer treatment where an illness is graded from symptoms needing investigation through to stages of the disease varying in seriousness, that had led him to decide the DSM listing was not helpful.

"We need a more radical change to the diagnostic approach which allows people to get help when they really need it but also ensures risky treatments that cause harm wont get used."

Treatment centres such as Headspace, which allowed for non-drug treatments such as counselling or employment help, could provide the first step in such a system, without needing a DSM diagnosis to be attached to the people who used them.

"It's quite a legitimate debate, what the boundaries of mental illness are," he said.

"We want to provide help, but we don't want to turn everyone into a brain disease."

FULL ARTICLE HERE.

Allen Frances: DSM-5 to the Barricades on Grief: Defending the Indefensible

Allen J. Frances, M.D. at Psychology Today reports:

The storm of opposition to DSM 5 is now focused on its silly and unnecessary proposal to medicalize grief. DSM 5 would encourage the diagnosis of 'Major Depressive Disorder' almost immediately after the loss of a loved one- having just 2 weeks of sadness and loss of interest along with reduced appetite, sleep, and energy would earn the MDD label (and all too often an unnecessary and potentially harmful pill treatment). This makes no sense. To paraphrase Voltaire, normal grief is not 'Major', is not 'Depressive,' and is not 'Disorder.' Grief is the normal and necessary human reaction to love and loss, not some phony disease.

All this seems perfectly clear to just about everyone in the world except the small group of people working on DSM 5. The press is now filled with scores of shocked articles stimulated by two damning editorial pieces in the Lancet and a recent prominent article in the New York Times.

The role of public defender of DSM 5 has fallen on John Oldham MD, president of the American Psychiatric Association, and a good friend of mine for 45 years. John is a smart and good person placed by the unkind fates in the unenviable position of having to defend untenable DSM 5 decisions. He makes a soldierly attempt- but his arguments ring hollow and are tone deaf to the dangers of the DSM 5 proposal and all the obvious reasons it has met such universal scorn. I wish it were someone else on the other side of this question, but there is no alternative but to show the four ways in which Dr Oldham's arguments badly miss the point.

Dr. Oldham defense can be accessed at: (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/758788)

1)"When we say that we are recommending removing this exclusion of grief from the diagnosis of depression, people have misinterpreted this to mean that therefore everyone who is grieving after the loss of a spouse will be diagnosed as depressed. That is not at all the case. Even if you meet the criteria for depression, it doesn't mean that you're going to have treatment slapped on you. It just means that maybe you'd have a conversation about it with your doctor and perhaps agree to a watchful waiting period and be alert to how things go and maybe check in a little more frequently. Nothing is automatic; there are lots of options."

Annotation: Nothing could betray more clearly the ivory tower world view that consistently leads DSM 5 astray. In the real world, most diagnosis of mental disorder and most prescription of medicine is done by primary care doctors- who have little training in psychiatric diagnosis, spend fewer than 10 minutes with each patient, and are often influenced by drug company marketing. There is no way that even the most skilled psychiatrist can distinguish normal grieving from mild depression- we must not expect primary care doctors to do it. Watchful waiting is wonderful- but all too rare. Drug companies will jump greedily into this vast new market. This is not at all APA's intent, but it is a dreadful unintended consequence that must be (but hasn't been) factored into a complete risk/benefit analysis.

2) Dr Oldham notes that the DSM IV bereavement exclusion is "very limited; it only applies to a death of a spouse or a loved one. Why is that different from a very strong reaction after you have had your entire home and possessions wiped out by a tsunami, or earthquake, or tornado; or what if you are in financial trouble, or laid off from work out of the blue? In any of these situations, the exclusion doesn't apply. What we know is that any major stress can activate significant depression in people who are at risk for it. It doesn't make sense to differentiate the loss of a loved one as understandable grief from equally severe stress and sadness after other kinds of loss."

Annotation: Yes indeed. 'Major Depressive Disorder' is currently applied carelessly and inappropriately to the expectable reactions people also have to others of life's severe stresses- divorce, loss of job, financial difficulties, etc. This is precisely why studies so often show no advantage for medication over placebo in the treatment of depression- many of the people studied aren't really depressed. There is an obvious opposite solution that would correct this and also achieve the consistency Dr Oldham seeks. DSM 5 shouldn't broaden MDD to include grief- rather it should narrow MDD to cover only real depressions. Consistency and more accurate diagnosis can be achieved by raising the severity and duration requirements for 'Major Depressive Disorder' whenever symptoms occur in the context of a powerful stressor.

3)"We want people to get treatment who need it."

Annotation: They already do. DSM IV is completely explicit that the MDD diagnosis should be made whenever grief has clearly turned into depression- ie when the bereaved becomes suicidal, or psychotic, or has severely impairing symptoms, or has had similar depressive episodes before. DSM IV aint broke on this, making the DSM 5 fix even more nonsensical.

4) Dr Oldham says this was not a snap decision. "There was a lot of very thoughtful discussion about it. Nobody saw it as just clear as it could be. It was not an immediately agreed upon consensus. This is something that is sensitive and needs to be thought about carefully, and we recognize that"

Annotation: The DSM 5 decision making process is puzzling and opaque in the extreme. A small group of otherwise very smart people make a decision that solves no outstanding problem, is based on no credible scientific literature, arouses remarkably strong opposition among mental health and medical professionals, creates a frenzy of press scorn, and seems crazy and insulting to the community of grievers. The consensus that needed achieving was not within the narrow confines of a few die hard DSM 5 enthusiasts. DSM 5 is a document with wide public health and public policy implications. It must represent a consensus of the literature and of the field. Instead, it is now DSM 5 against the world. This is no way to develop the consensus needed in an official diagnostic system.

The interesting but very sad thing is that Dr Oldham leaves absolutely no running room for DSM 5. He could have said something like: "This change is still being studied. It is still just a draft proposal and we are very grateful for all the input which will certainly go into the final decision." Instead, he paints himself into a tiny corner, stalwartly defending the indefensible.

This is clear writing on the wall that the DSM 5 decisions on many other equally reckless proposals are also written in stone. If DSM 5 won't back down in the face of this extraordinary pressure on grief, it is probably dug in on many of its other controversial and harmful proposals. My previous lingering hope that external opposition might lead to useful compromises was naively predicated on the overly optimistic assumption that the American Psychiatric Association would follow the rational path, cut its losses, and reject the worst DSM 5 suggestions. Instead, it is APA to the barricades.

So where do we stand? Most likely scenario: The press will increasingly pick DSM 5 apart and expose all of its considerable risks. APA will keep missing the point, continue to provide lame defenses, and follow its blind momentum forward to a premature publication date. A lamentably poor quality and terribly risky DSM 5 will be published. DSM 5 will be roundly rejected outside the United States and will have greatly diminished sales (and hopefully influence) within. But the drug companies will aggressively promote its suggestions to swell further the already swollen sales of antipsychotic, stimulant, antidepressant, and anti-anxiety drugs. The epidemic of childhood obesity will get worse; the illegal market in stimulants will flourish; polypharmacy will increase; and the severely ill will continue to get short shrift- and all sorts of other harmful unintended consequences will also flourish.

Up until this point, I had hoped DSM 5 could save itself if only enough pressure were applied to make it see the light. This no longer seems likely and government intervention is probably the last (and possibly the only) resort.