In the musical Guys and Dolls, the character named Adelaide has a psychosomatic cold. As she explained,
The average unmarried female
basically insecure
due to some long frustration may react
with psychosomatic symptoms
difficult to endure
affecting the upper respiratory tract.
Guys and Dolls is a quaint artifact from the 1950s. Nevertheless, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual still gives doctors permission to say, “It’s all in your head” if they can’t immediately figure out what’s wrong with you. An article of mine that was published in the journal Medical Hypotheses says that doctors cannot make that kind of diagnosis without making an error in reasoning. For that reason, I argue that the APA should remove conversion disorder and somatization disorder from the DSM. The fifth edition of the DSM (DSM-5) is due in 2013.
Continue reading “American Medicine Is Still Stuck in the 1950s!”