When I asked Robert Spitzer about the possibility that he’d inadvertently created a world in which some ordinary behaviours were being labelled mental disorders, he fell silent. I waited for him to answer. But the silence lasted three minutes. Finally he said, ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Do you ever think about it?’ I asked him. ‘I guess the answer is I don’t really,’ he said. ‘Maybe I should. But I don’t like the idea of speculating how many of the DSM-III categories are describing normal behaviour.’ ‘Why don’t you like speculating on that?’ I asked. ‘Because then I’d be speculating on how much of it is
...more
