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From Harper’s Magazine, October 1917, page 742

From Harper’s: L. J. Davis on the

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of

Mental Disorders, 4th Ed.

From “The Encyclopedia of Insanity: A psychiatric handbook lists a madness for everyone,” by L. J. Davis in the February 1997 Harper’s Magazine

Has there ever been a task more futile than the attempt to encompass, in the work of a single lifetime, let alone in a single work, the whole of human experience? For roughly five thousand years, poets, playwrights, philosophers, and cranks have incinerated untold quantities of olive oil, beeswax, and fossil fuel in pursuit of this maddeningly elusive goal; all have failed, sometimes heroically. Not even Shakespeare could manage it; closer to our own times, Dickens, a sentimental Englishman, the son of a clerk, perhaps came closest, though he believed in spontaneous human combustion and managed to miss the entirety of the twentieth century. Despite the best efforts of minds great, small, and sometimes insane, the riddle of the human condition has remained utterly impervious to solution. Until now. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (popularly known as the DSM-IV), human life is a form of mental illness.

Published by the American Psychiatric Association in 1994, the DSM-IV is some 886 pages long and weighs (in paperback) slightly less than three pounds; if worn over the heart in battle, it would probably stop a .50-caliber machine-gun bullet at 1,700 yards. Nearly a decade in the making, it is the product of work groups, task forces, advisers, and review committees (the acknowledgment of whom requires twenty-two pages) representing the flower of the profession and the distillation of its thought. The DSM-IV has no beginning, no middle, and no end; like a cookbook (which the preface is at pains to say it is not), the manual is organized by categories, not chapters. But it does have a plot (everyone is either nuts or going there), a central and unifying thesis (everyone is treatable), and it tells its stark tale with implacable simplicity. Here, on a staggering scale, are gathered together all the known mental disturbances of humankind, the illnesses of mind and spirit that cry out for the therapeutic touch of–are you ready for this?–the very people who wrote the book.

Read the rest of “The Encyclopedia of Insanity” for free…

From the Web

Early adolescence is often marked by changes in school context, family relationships, and developmental processes. In the context of these changes, academic performance often declines, while at the same time the long-term implications of academic performance increase. In promoting achievement across elementary and secondary school levels, the significant role of families, family–school relations, and parental involvement in education has been highlighted. Although there is a growing body of literature focusing on parental involvement in education during middle school, this research has not been systematically examined to determine which types of involvement have the strongest relation with achievement. The authors conducted a meta-analysis on the existing research on parental involvement in middle school to determine whether and which types of parental involvement are related to achievement. Across 50 studies, parental involvement was positively associated with achievement, with the exception of parental help with homework. –“Parental Involvement in Middle School: A Meta-Analytic Assessment of the Strategies That Promote Achievement” (PDF), Nancy E. Hill and Diana F. Tyson, Developmental Psychology

If Ronald Reátegui Levy someday finds that he is the last Jew of Iquitos, it may well be of his own doing. His dream, which he has vigorously pursued, is to persuade the descendants of Sephardic merchants who settled in this remote corner of the Amazon basin more than a century ago to reaffirm their ties to Judaism and emigrate to Israel. “It is getting very lonely here,” said Mr. Reátegui Levy, 52, an inspector at Peru’s national oil company, referring to the more than 400 descendants of Jewish pioneers who have formally converted to Judaism this decade, including about 160 members of his immediate and extended family. Nearly all of them now live in Israel. –“Adopting Forebears’ Faith and Leaving Peru for Israel,” Simon Romero, The New York Times

Lastly I also suspect I feel a little vulnerable because this is ground I have never certainly never covered before– so if you have pearls of wisdom on how we figure all this out please let me know… In the meantime please sleep soundly knowing that despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul. –South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, writing to his girlfriend, in “Exclusive: Read e-mails between Sanford, woman,” The State