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The End of Innocence

By RICHARD LICHTMAN

"...Our society is no different from others in attempting to codify "ideologies" designed to establish and perpetuate the "legitimacy" of our ruling order. What distinguishes us is the manner in which we construct this ruling illusion: by technology, the manipulation of mass media, the proliferation of integrated civic institutions and the state's endorsement of professional, that is, expert, identities.

This effort is exercised in the realm of popular culture, the political and economic systems, and in the enclaves of the intellectual elites. We possess no generally acknowledged set of institutions charged to construct definitions of the "moral" and "immoral," "good" and "bad," or "normal" and "pathological." The closest we come, perhaps, is in the realm of psychotherapy, where the DSM, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual serves to define what would generally be considered by the mental health profession, "mental disorders."

This is a manifestation of what Niebuhr had referred to as 'the conflicts of sick souls being replaced by the struggles of sick minds' in "a seeking after the kingdom of health and mental peace and its comforts." Of course, the DSM being itself an ideological work, that is, an analysis designed to disguise, mystify and invert the actual creation of "dysfunction," must be "stood on its feet" to reveal the reality it functions to obscure.

So it is no accident that the DSM begins by informing us that "Neither deviant behavior (e.g. political, religious, or sexual) nor conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict is a symptom of dysfunction in the individual...." By this account we are precluded from locating the sources of individual aggression, destruction, violence, venality, manipulation, exploitation, subordination and other such "pathologies" in the larger society. " more