Don’t use the DSM for starters, its only legally valid for the necessityvof courts, and the means to defining changes, as one section of the population reacts negatively to the word “dementia” (the old, who are scared of it, react well out of proportion to its actuality, thinking all is over) and the young who don’t give a damn if told they have dementia, and shrug it off. So they cut in half what qualifies as dementia, but the population IS more or less just as it was before.
There is medical psychology, and philosophical psychology. Doctors address problems and call it a syndrome if they don’t quite know, philosophers call it a problem and investigate.
I encourage all non-medically qualified philosophers to try their hand at studying psychology, and once you get enough of a background and can stand on you own two feet, feel free to attack, admonish, and even pull the rug of authority out from clinical psychologists who try to ride their degrees over you… many of them are ignorant outside of the bare naked necessities of running their practice, and fumble around in philosophy.
As they are trained and legally liable, you can’t expect them to be too inventive or going too far out on a limb intuitively. Even if right, patient can perceive its wrong, sue… they can loose everything including their practice.
At the same time, its not our position as philosophers to know what every medication does, the list of every syndrome and disorder, etc. We can tell someone they are fucked up… even identify the parts that are fucked up, but make it clear that were not a psychologist, and they need to follow up. Why? They might have treatments your unaware of, group therapies, etc. Second opinions are awesome too.
So yeah… a philosopher has no business looking at the editions of the DSM, as it has no relation to the real world.Its a compromise for clinical use, and straddles the current medical and pharmaceutical ways and means out society uses. It is the first step (unless the police dragged you in for observation, in which case they are the first step).
Our job is as it always was, just now we don’t try for the medical diagnosis, or half added and shaky handed hold a scapel over someone. We might have the very best of understandings on how a disorder operates, but dammit, I just don’t trust our ability to keep people alive with some of the hair brained assumptions we’ve come to over the years. We never took the Hippocratic Oath.
Some basic things we can do is make it easier for them. There hadn’t been much effort at all in converting old philosophical texts that discussed medicine and cognition (including “ethics”) into modern terminology, charting how they relate to our modern understanding of the mind. They were amazingly accurate at points in the past, entire schools of philosophy endlessly researched aspects of mind and philosophy, and its more or less off limits for consultation as no one specializes in merging.
You have a little effort by Marxists to convert their theories, mostly due to the absurd alliance between the Marxist and Freudians in France, but… its largely going nowhere. Our best bet is to start ancuent to modern, creating a wikibased concordance, who’s table of contents is neurological, by part of body, or behavior, and every philosopher or questioned or discussed a aspect can be listed, with graphics discussing what they were probably talking about. This can further bevreferenced to norms of the current DSM, links to Web MD, whatever…
Psychologists, because they are creatures responsive to the courts and politically responsive medical boards, will never be independent as we are. If a psychological disorder suddenly has to become embraced as the new norm, expect them to dance around the issue. It remains very much still a psychological disease, and the authority of med boards and the courts can’t make it otherwise. We can still tell a kleptomaniac “listen buddy, your fucked up.” and write about the subject, advocate, etc. But if medical psychologist move away from it for political reasons, acting illogical and incoherent… saying “yeah, stealing stuff impulsively is perfectly natural” then that is the case for them. Sad, yes… but its our reality.
Its a side effect of the courts relying on expert witnesses to determine the sanity of a defendant, it was originally the judges job. Medical psychologists need pay, so they go to courts, courts and legislative bodies pass laws on their behavior and standing… become quasi-inserted into the system, even when individually, they might have next to no contact with it.
This is no different than in civil law countries like Italy where philosophers can write on the law, and its history, and have more standing than precedent, like under common law. As a result, you end up with two kinds of philosophers in those countries, and legally authorative professors at universities. In the US, nobody paid Rawls much attention… he was a stupid goof, HUD out at Oxfordm same for Searle at Berkeley. But had they worked in Italy, and you committed a crime, their works will be a primary factor in determining what the law is, and I’m sure the medical practices, especially psychologists, hate us more in those countries than we hate them here.
Sweden has hate crime laws, so you can’t expect their system to function logically in the long term… its a bad example. Once you start banning certain abstractions due to emotional damage, ALL speech which effects emotions must eventually be banned. There is no long term way to contain it, only short term rationalization as to what makes sense. It rips society apart piecemeal, and no one ever sees it comming, as its always absurd how it comes about. In Christianity, we still remember the absurdity of religious fanatics demanding always God being capitalized… people still chew you out sometimes, like its the only thing that matters. We had a Hugh period in the English language when we couldn’t decide what got capitalized and what didn’t. Shit, I can’t even imagine the absurdities Hate Crime speech will develop. It will obviously become a tool for pogroms and for people to force their legal prejudices against people supposedly hating for speaking their minds, but its hard to say what else it will evolve into. Its a very disturbing philosophy, and its why I openly advocate nuking Sweden. Solves that problem. Might even usher in world peace, once they stop issuing Nobel peace prizes to tyrants and dictators. Do they really need a prize for NOT killing one another?