Gloss on the latest WSJ piece, on Ralph Waldo Emerson and the American Psychological Association, in a contest for the very soul of America. The APA has already decisively won the contest for the very prose style of America, in which, for example, the passive voice in the long run will replace the active voice, as passive people will replace active people. Thinking of it as a direct inversion of the values of people such as Emerson and Thoreau sheds some light on the real project.
The DSM is a moral guide, or a moral theory, or a moral program. It addresses the questions "What sort of person should I be?" "How should I treat others?" "How should I behave?" "What shall I believe?" "For what may I hope?" Now in this regard it has some drawbacks. It flubs the fact/value distinction, for one thing. The authors do not seem to be aware that they are presenting a moral theory, or at any rate they definitely don't want their readers to be aware of that. It is a bewildering nest of inadequately theorized concepts, hardly even put in relation to one another.
If Emerson attracted and inspired readers with the intensity and beauty of his writing and ideas, the APAs disseminates its values largely as a matter of institutional enforcement. Where Emerson wanted to set your mind alight, the APA wants to set it right, chemically. I wonder what percentage of people who end up consulting psychologists are effectively being required to do so. Emerson was taking only volunteers.
Replacing virtue and vice with health and illness is a merely verbal shift; the concepts perform quite the same task and are intended to shape each and all of us. And coming down to it, I'm afraid the moral prescription is literal: hope for pills.
