I just finished my psych reading for Wednesday, which is about psychopathology. It was a pretty interesting chapter, and it also rather entertaining to read. I'm not sure whether it provided the kind of enjoyment you get from learning something new, or the more perverse kind that comes from watching "Law and Order: @#$% You" (Clever, right?); but if it was indeed the latter, I may be guilty of having been a little bit too intrigued.
Regardless, psychologists have really got to get their act together. It sounds like mental disorders are generally manifested with way too much variation for the diagnostic criteria to be of much use; so if the disorder contains one criterion that doesn't apply to a particular patient, there is no treatment for him or her.
Then there is the issue of where these disorders come from. Genes and environment, blah blah blah poverty, yes, I'm sure that's the case, but researchers are still having trouble determining what it is in abnormal brain chemistry that corresponds to given mental disorders. If there are differing neurochemical explanations for multiple cases of the same disorder, should we really be grouping them under the same name? There are plenty of (I hesitate to say "real," but I'll go ahead and do it to make my pre-med roommate happy) real medical conditions that share similar external symptoms with one another, but that are nonetheless distinct.
Lastly, I have always been creeped out by interacting with people who are not as they seem, like characters in theatrical productions who try to elicit audience participation or the clown at McDonald's. So I think I would be nervous to meet someone with dissociative identity disorder. I'm not saying that I would cry, as I have on numerous occasions when confronted with costumed figures, but I wouldn't be too eager to talk with he or she.
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