How Shyness Became a Mental Illness

Being fairly new to both the depth psyche studies and the idea of anti-psychiatric practices, I'm not sure if this if this article is entirely fitting for this [anti-psych] board. It looked good to me and I do agree with what it discusses, though I don't know if I'm going to jump at getting the book. I don't buy or get my ideas from books, but I like that this one shares my sentiments.

I personally have only ever been fascinated by behavioural sciences mostly attributed to other anthropological and biological studies. The DSM-IV (and whatever else is available these days) has generally made me very uncomfortable in light of my views about human behaviour. The general consensus that "it is unknown if genes or environment play a role, and doesn't matter, because generally hard-core mindf*ck and administered chemical combinations should correct it" has always put me on edge.

In “Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness”, Northwestern's Christopher Lane chronicles the “highly unscientific and often arbitrary way” in which widespread revisions were made to “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (DSM), a publication known as the bible of psychiatry that is consulted daily by insurance companies, courts, prisons and schools as well as by physicians and mental health workers.

Full article here. Apologies if it's been posted already, I tried to peek around a bit.

That sounds a bit out-dated, even for an oct-30 2007 post. They have been finding genetic markers in direct relation to thousands of physical and mental problems ever since the international genetic research initiatives, and such.