Psychology

Via Insty , we learn news that must be a great relief to the current occupant of 1600 Penn and his dwindling band of sycophants:

CHANGE: Narcissism no longer a psychiatric disorder. Well, that’s a relief:

[More here. In fairness, the basic idea apparently is narcissism being reclassified as a symptom of a deeper personality disorder rather than a disorder in itself. The change, being pushed by researchers, is vociferously opposed by practicing clinical psychiatrists — apparently not the first example of a rift between researchers and clinicians in the community.]

C2 commenter “buzzsawmonkey” had some pithy comments in yesterday afternoon’s C2 thread:

“Any discipline in which something can be declared a “disorder” or not by vote is the province of charlatans.”

“Reply to Lucius Septimius in #220:

I was working for the ACLU in the ’70s, on gay-rights issues (if you can believe it), when the American Psychiatric Association decided by vote that homosexual behavior was “no longer a disorder.” While this was certainly useful to me in my professional capacity, even then I realized that any outfit that could decree what was or was not a “disorder” by vote of its membership was of necessity a fraud from top to bottom.”

But… “the science is settled”, dontcha know!