29 Aug Beyond the DSM
“What we need is more facilities where people can walk in and say ‘Hey, I’m feeling really down today. Can I just be here for a while and see what could be a contribution to me and make me feel better?’ I think this is true for most people but especially young people.”
That’s a comment from one of the hundreds of people who completed the Survey on Diagnosis and Emotional Distress online. It’s also part of the report, “The Diagnostic Debate: Voices From the Street,” I gave as part of a symposium at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association earlier this August in Toronto. You can read the full report here. And you can take the survey here.
The symposium, “Beyond the DSM—Current Trends in Devising New Diagnostic Alternatives,” included informative and impassioned presentations by colleagues Jonathan Raskin, Barry Duncan, Kirk Schneider, Jeff Rubin and Sarah Kamens, and enthusiastic audience participation.
loisholzman
Posted at 22:40h, 30 AugustThanks, Lonnie, for reminding us what people reach for, even as we’re more and more socialized to reach for labels. And thanks for the reference too.
Lonny Meinecke
Posted at 15:11h, 29 AugustVery cool, thanks for sharing this! Developing youth, especially, simply have needs expressed in unanswerable questions or in unexplainable behaviors. They need someone they can reach for who will always be there when they reach for them. Humans do not reach for labels, humans reach for people. When a child reaches out for us, and we hand them a label to ponder instead of our time and love, wouldn’t that confuse any of us? For me, each teen awkwardness, each developmental anomaly, is so much like Fischer-Mamblona’s gosling, Feli. They simply do not know how to ask for affection, because we taught them how to think, but not how to find affection. Living things cannot hug or hold thoughts, even if we maintain they can. We can’t because these abstract things in our heads, cannot elect to hug us back. We tell them what to be, like labels.
Lonny
Reference
Fischer-Mamblona, H. (2000). On the evolution of attachment-disordered behaviour. Attachment & Human Development, 2(1), 8-21. doi:10.1080/146167300361291