Thursday, November 17, 2011

Last Chapters!

Chapter 10 was all about people being diagnosed for diseases that they do not have.  It started off with Ronson attending a Scientology meeting, where all the members mocked the new diseases that had been added to the DSM.  Ronson then met with Robert Spitzer.  Spitzer had embarrassed the American Psychology association by sending in "fakes" and having them diagnosed.  Once he was caught they claimed that they would be able to catch any fakes that he sent in.  A month later they thought he had sent nearly 50 fakes but he had sent none.  They also discussed the new diseases that were added to DSM and that almost every problem in todays society had been added as a diagnosed disease.  He then met with Gary Maier who talked about how children are wrongly medicated because they want their children to be normal.  They don't want to believe that normal children can have problems without having a disease.  As a result many kids are being medicated when they don't need to be.

I found this chapter to be very interesting because we learned about the DSMs in sociology.  I think it is very true that our society has become very reliant on medicine and needing an explanation for any problem they may encounter.  I was really happy with the last chapter because it closed the book well and ended all the loose ties that Ronson had left.  I was unsure if I agreed with what happened to Tony. Through the different parts of the books that he was in, I started to believe that he was a psychopath! The whole book kind of freaked me out because I don't like thinking about the fact that there is such a fine line between normal and psychopath.

No comments:

Post a Comment