Turning the DSM Against Itself: Diagnosing the Disorders of Western Psychology

A new paper satirically reworks psychiatric nosology, diagnosing colonial behaviors—greed, amnesia, and entitlement—as the true psychological disorders.

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What if the DSM diagnosed the cultural pathologies of capitalism and colonialism rather than the individuals afflicted by them? A forthcoming article in American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association (APA), does just that—turning what scholars call psychiatry’s diagnostic bible against itself.

Rather than categorizing distress within individuals, scholars Kaori Wada and Karlee D. Fellner use the DSM’s own language to diagnose the systemic disorders of power—reframing greed as an addiction, land accumulation as pathological hoarding, and historical amnesia as a dissociative disorder.

Drawing on Frantz Fanon’s concept of sociodiagnostics, Wada and Fellner situate psychiatric diagnosis as a cultural product of coloniality, perpetuating what they call psycholonization—the psychological subjugation of Indigenous peoples through Western mental health frameworks.

“The DSM and psychologizing discourses are cultural products born out of coloniality, which continue to serve as tools for the subjugation of iyiniwak (Indigenous peoples). By using the very language of the DSM, we diagnose the colonial logics and ideologies inherent in these categories,” write Wada and Fellner.

This article thus serves as both a critique of psychiatry’s complicity in colonialism and a radical re-imagination of what healing and diagnosis could look like from an Indigenous relational framework.

“‘Symptoms’ are our relations’ way of calling us to needed medicines, wisdoms, and collective wellness,” they add.

If psychiatric diagnosis is, as Wada and Fellner argue, a colonial artifact, then mental health care itself may be a tool of social control rather than healing. This has profound implications—not just for Indigenous communities but for anyone whose suffering has been medicalized rather than understood in historical and political context.

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46 COMMENTS

    • I use to think that was the primary but think birdsong Alice Milker would agree society as in the authoritarian regime of Hitler whom she studied was based on fear and how parents discipline is a reflection of the community they live in. Abd inter generational trauma especially with enslaved peoples who were ruled by overseers and owners the whole sense of humanity was broken in a very horrific way. So yes and and then perhaps we all were suppose to be rhizomic thinkers in a horizontal way versus the stone silos that have sometimes turned into stone and then those folks who choose to sit on top of the solitary pillars for years in Egypt part of but not really in the movement of the desert fathers and mothers.We need a textured life topography not just isolated pillars or flat surfaces. Thanks for your commentary always good to read.

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    • While I agree with your focus on those in a person’s orbit, especially those at home, and especially those at home during childhood development, I don’t think the ROOT cause is found there. It’s more of an immediate cause because this cause didn’t arise in a vacuum. This cause itself is not without a cause.

      To say that the cause begins and ends with those in a person’s orbit is to now treat the person’s orbit as the root cause. But the people in a person’s orbit have lives and values and beliefs impacted by their own orbits and by the communities they live in.

      But to assert that the community is the root cause is to now treat the community in a vacuum. The community’s way of life and social norms and values and beliefs are greatly impacted by local, state, national, and now global governing systems and social norms (political, economic, social, and religious).

      It may be inconvenient or uncomfortable to accept where the causal chain leads, but it appears to firmly terminate in the very systems we rely upon to provide order and protection. What caused the systems? The arrogant ignorance, selfishness, greed, and egos of the men who established them, perhaps?

      Although these men are long gone, their systems codifying selfishness and greed as our drivers of ambition remain. The people these systems control are often better than the systems controlling them. That can cause duress.

      These systems are dysfunctional and poorly designed. Individual distress is often a reaction to, at some level, these systemic dysfunctions. Although the cascading dysfunction may arrive in the behavior of those in a distressed person’s orbit, those in his orbit are not the root cause of the dysfunction. These are systemic results. Our systems are to blame.

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        • Consider any hierarchical system of concentrated power. The US political system of representative democracy, for example. While there is nothing wrong with democracy, it’s a matter of scale. The representative aspect of our representative democracy still elevates a few who vote on the rules for others, dictating how it is and will be for others, for people they have never met let alone understand well enough to represent them.
          In a gymnasium democracy, those voting on the rules know each other and are making rules they themselves debate, rules made for themselves—the same people who will experience the consequences of their rules.
          Here, the individual has agency in making the rules governing them. In a representative arrangement, their voice is reduced to filling out an oval on a ballot. They are represented merely to the degree that their world view and life experience aligns with one of the two parties who will make the rules.
          Does that work for you?

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          • A more direct democracy does not eliminate alliances, backstabbing, and self-serving behavior. Social pressure is one of the key reasons for a secret ballot. Voter privacy reinforces the integrity of the democatic process.

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          • While a more direct democracy doesn’t eliminate anything, does a representative democracy disallow these behaviors? Might it even exacerbate their effects by promoting a binary environment of us and them (red or blue)?

            My ideas about this particular topic–voter privacy–are mostly captured in an essay about an alternative form of democracy. It was written in criticism of an idea raised by a philosopher named John Rawls, the idea of a “veil of ignorance” as a mechanism to promote justice through ensuring rules are fair in the first place. Ensuring rules are fair in the first place to promote justice is a great idea, but the classic approaches to achieving fairness and justice seem to fail too often on both counts.

            Although too long (and rude?) to post here, it’s really not too long if you care to read it: https://drive.google.com/file/d/145KQzCw-v669q-OA5pwka371UFfafU4l/view?usp=sharing

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          • FYI: Rawls’ “veil of ignorance” is just a polite term for totalitarianism.

            Makes me wonder if he read “Brave New World” or “Animal Farm”.

            If he’s aiming for that much conformity he ought to use robots.

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          • While representative democracy is not perfect, saying that it promotes an “us vs them” mentality ignores the fact that healthy debate and disagreement are what lead to better decision making as these force people to not only consider other perspectives but also think critically about their own.

            There’s nothing just about Rawls’ “veil of ignorance” as it’s dictatorial to an extreme degree.

            It also stifles human creativity, which directly assaults human dignity.

            I also think it was selfish of him to want to impose his will on others.

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  5. It’s high time that someone undertook this timely project.
    If people who compulsively cling to possessions are said to suffer from OCD or a hoarding disorder, how should we classify billionaires like Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg, who amass untold amounts of wealth while tens of millions of their fellow citizens go bankrupt from medical emergencies or lose their means of subsistence as a result of the outsourcing of jobs to low-wage countries without environmental and workplace safeguards?
    I call this conduct “capital accumulation disorder.”

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    • I concur with your diagnosis, Doctor, it very well could be the progressive stage of advanced “primitive accumulation disorder,” which if left undiagnosed and untreated for hundreds of years can easily advance to the end-stage “Capital accumulation disorder” we see today. Sadly, the outlook is poor. It’s ever so difficult to come back from end-stage CAD. I’m not sure they have the right drugs for that yet. But we can sure try lots of solutions.

      However, my esteemed colleague suggests perhaps it’s a distant cousin to “Industrial Disease” (Dire Straights):
      “He wrote me a prescription, he said, ‘You are depressed
      But I’m glad you came to see me to get this off your chest
      Come back and see me later, next patient, please
      Send in another victim of industrial disease'”

      Personally, I suspect “Selfish Ego Syndrome” may also be an underlying cause, empowered by the related “Selfish System Disorder” coupled with a touch of “Loveless System Confusion.” All of these manifest as a maniacal lust for concentrated power, so delineating precisely which it is will take decades of research. Certainly more studies are needed.

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      • I wonder if this topic could serve as fodder for a fun podcast for MIA (or a segment of the existing weekly podcast?). Call it “Diagnosing Disorder.” But here’s the twist: it’s dedicated to the “disorder of diagnosing,” as opposed to the “diagnosing of disorder.” Endless possibilities of “disorders” to humorously “diagnose.” So long as systemic causes are ignored, it could be fun for a long time–just like in real life (snark).

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          • Oh no–not BAD! That’s serious! I’m unaware of any cure for it. I’m not not sure there’s even a treatment beyond basic humility immersion therapy, which isn’t currently approved for use in the US.

            The good news is that FDA trials are now underway to test a new medication for the rest of us to deal with the potential of a BAD/CAD convergence crisis. I think it’s called Fukitol. It’s on a fast track and with any luck, there will be 330 million doses available by year’s end.

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          • You’re quite right, Fukitol has been around for a while, but it failed to gain FDA approval back in the 80s. It, too, caused anal leaking. Arguments that postmortem anal leaking is irrelevant were overridden. It was considered undignified.

            So it couldn’t be marketed in the US. Everyone knows that only good, safe, effective drugs gain FDA approval.

            But now, given recent political events and realities, Fukitol has been slightly reformulated and they’re taking it through trials under its new name: Myendall. But it’s basically Fukitol (without the postmortem anal leaking).

            If only they had a drug to treat the oral anal leaking so commonly observed when those afflicted with BAD find themselves in positions of power. “Justshutthefukupitall?”

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          • But to be fair, honest, and serious for a moment, I believe “diagnoses” should be focused on (if not limited to) the systems and systemic dysfunction. BAD systems. A person afflicted with BAD isn’t a valid target, for example. It’s not that person’s fault for being afflicted with BAD (even if fictitious). Whoever it is you may not like, or consider BAD, it’s not that person’s “fault” for being that person.

            Our systems put a few people in power. That concentrated power doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it came from somewhere–namely, the individuals from which it is usurped in order to concentrate it.

            Politically, when someone we disagree with wins an election and wields the force of concentrated power, it causes distress in some more than others. The power taken from us is not being used as we would like.

            But we must accept that our systems produce the results they produce. Every system is perfectly designed for its outputs. Our systems are designed so a single person is given great power over hundreds of millions. Any person who can win an election.

            Yet at the same time we know every person makes mistakes. Empowered by the machinery of our political system a single person’s mistakes can have not only industrial and national impact, but global consequences–some impacting the future in indelible ways. Classic design mistake. Miserable, but classic.

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  7. But this intellectual talking shop is never going to change the dial and few if any of you critical of psychiatry or even less academia are turning your critical attention to the worthlessness and futility of such intellectual and critical efforts. America is proof that a society based on individual selfishness, i.e. ‘what I want’ leads to a society of people who believe what they want, including you academics and ‘professionals’, as if believing what you want could possibly be reconcilable to seeing things as they are. Now see the worthlessness of all our intellectual and socially conditioned activities today: that perception alone will radicalize and efficacy and make them antisocial, i.e. true, healthy and honest destructive action. Wanting to ingratiate yourself with pencil necks and wonky squares of any kind destroys the possibility of such action so if you want piggy treats I’d stick to alcohol or donuts instead of ego trips which can only come from the social milleue.

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  8. Thank you Justin for covering this vital conceptual proposition. I’ve been thinking about just this type of revisionist framing for some time (5 or so years). Unfortunately I’m in no position to give my ideas surrounding these framings any credible legs ( e.g., professional, credentialed, etc.)- however otherwise it’d be a hoot to share some of my ideas with the group! It seems to me that this paper has a rather fertile field to work from (lol), one that could glean some interesting insights, if not a few troubling and even comical associations. I very much look forward to the reading the article…

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  10. For me, the passage from Ta-Nehisi Coates book, “The Message”, totally captures how I regard the DSM: “{And} we are plagued by dead language and dead stories that serve people whose aim is nothing short of a dead world”.

    I resisted the low hanging fruit of hurling various “disorders” at psychiatry in my earlier comment, but I now see by others comments that was a missed opportunity! The word disorder was always suspect to begin with-for a long list of reasons. That said, I can’t help but add two disorders that seem to beg some long overdue ‘reattribution’. 1, Psychiatric Opposition Defiance Disorder (PODD): ergo the pathological disposition to ignore, defy, and ‘oppose” the very tenants of science, facts, professional ethics, and the prevailing evidence in the efficacy in treatments and actual consequences in the lives of (patients).
    2, Psychiatric Authoritarian Disorder (PAD, oddly enough, the obverse of PODD!). The best description of this disorder for me comes from a long ago Quigman’s comic. In it, a bearded and bespectacled man in a tweed jacket stands at a podium that reads, International Psychiatric Convention. The psychiatrist speaker then says, “Good evening, everybody is crazy but us, thank you and good night”.

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    • Thank you! It’s billing codes and control. It’s psychologically abusive. It tells people they are broken and the diagnosis makes people feel different from others. Like a weirdo. Psychiatry needs to take a more positive attitude toward people. Stop putting them in these manmade boxes that don’t exist. Stop calling it a personality disorder but rather just a personality and a way of thinking that may be problematic. Stop calling it mental illness and instead calling it a mental gift. Nicolas Tesla, Isaac Newton, Winston Churchill, Emily Dickenson… All had a “mental illness”. They were geniuses. Not broken. They didn’t need to be called delusional or locked up like animal nor medicated. They needed to be celebrated. Psychiatry would have diagnosed Jesus as “bipolar”, but look at the effects he has had on the world. Religion/spirituality is more effective against depression than “antidepressants”.

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  13. As an adoptee, reading *”Turning the DSM Against Itself: Diagnosing the Disorders of Power”* on Mad in America felt like a long-overdue reckoning. The idea that we could turn the diagnostic gaze toward power itself—rather than its victims—resonates deeply. Because if we applied the same scrutiny to adoption that has been used to pathologize adoptees, we’d find a system riddled with **institutional gaslighting, coercion, and systemic amnesia disorder**—not an individual “adjustment issue.”

    Adoption and the DSM: A Framework of Control

    Adoptees are disproportionately represented in mental health care, consistently diagnosed with attachment disorders, personality disorders, or complex PTSD. Yet, the DSM never asks: *Why are so many adoptees struggling?* Instead, it isolates symptoms from the larger context—removing the severance from identity, the coercion of mothers, the industry profiting from loss, and the forced assimilation into families that often demand gratitude over authenticity.

    The DSM treats the adoptee’s pain as **individual pathology**, never as a rational response to systemic harm. The adoption industry functions much like psychiatry in this article—**reframing suffering as a personal failing, rather than acknowledging the power structures that created it.**

    Diagnosing Adoption as a System

    If we turned the DSM against adoption, what might we find?

    – **Narrative Control Disorder (NCD)**: A condition where adoption agencies, lawmakers, and adoptive parents rewrite history to fit a more comfortable story—one where loss is love, identity is optional, and gratitude is expected.
    – **Systemic Coercion Disorder (SCD)**: Present in nearly every closed adoption system, where mothers are pressured, manipulated, or outright forced to relinquish their children, often without full knowledge of the long-term consequences.
    – **Institutional Gaslighting Syndrome (IGS)**: When adoptees speak about the trauma of separation, they are told they should be “grateful” and that adoption “saved” them, invalidating their lived experience and erasing their right to claim their truth.

    Reclaiming the Diagnostic Gaze

    This article on Mad in America exposes a critical flaw in how we understand power and pathology. Just as psychiatry has been weaponized to control dissent, adoption has been framed as an unquestioned good, making it nearly impossible to critique without being labeled as “angry,” “bitter,” or “unwell.” But **what if adoptees aren’t sick? What if we are simply the evidence of a system that refuses to be held accountable?**

    Instead of treating adoptees as broken, let’s diagnose the system that demands our silence.

    #AdopteeVoices: We Are Not the Problem
    Adoptees are speaking out, challenging the narratives forced upon us, and reclaiming our right to our identities, histories, and truths. Instead of diagnosing adoptees, it’s time to diagnose **the industry, the laws, and the myths that uphold adoption as an unquestionable good.**

    Read more adoptee perspectives in **Severance and Reclamation: The Adoptee’s Journey in Reverse** on Medium:
    [https://medium.com/@thoughtless-del/list/13467819de26](https://medium.com/@thoughtless-del/list/13467819de26)

    Let’s stop diagnosing adoptees—and start diagnosing the systems that harm us.

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  14. Take heart, Everyone: Over the past 50 years, thousands of psychiatrists and therapists have abandoned the DSM and its behavioral theories-based diagnoses and treatments after they discover the Three Principles-based psycho-spiritual understanding of the humans experience. The 3Ps understanding, originally described by Sydney Banks in the ’70s, has enabled hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world — with all different DSM diagnoses or life circumstances — uncover and access their innate mental health and begin to live in a fearless, peaceful and joyful state of mind.

    The DSM is based on the assumption and belief that people can get broken by their life experiences, and DSM-based treatments cannot cure the brokenness but they can perhaps help people accept and cope with their brokenness. The Three Principles explain why no one can ever be broken because mental health is our default (innate) nature. We all, however, have the power to obscure our connection to our internal wisdom, which can then result in us manifesting the DSM behaviors and “mental illness symptoms.”

    It’s terrible and sad that so many people and their loved ones have been hurt by 75 years of Western psychology! But The Three Principles have turned the tide, so it’s now just a matter of time before the current totally flawed model gets replaced by the Truth. Hear two M.D. psychiatrists talk about the exciting future of mental health in this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNBJL_c_Htg .

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  15. You allege that thousands of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have abandoned the DSM in favor of the 3 Ps modality, which supposedly is more effective in relieving emotional distress.
    Assuming for the moment that what you claim is actually true, are those same practitioners nonetheless still making use of fallacious, totally subjective DSM diagnostic categories and recommended treatments for the purpose of receiving reimbursement for their services? If so, they are knowingly committing fraud, inasmuch as the DSM lacks all credibility as a guide to sound medical practice (the NIH has acknowledged as much).

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