A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder (1992)
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder (1992)
1–10 of 107 posts
Re: A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder (1992)
#2 Wait, this isn't April 1st!
Seriously, happiness is a psychiatric disorder? Rare, sure, but a disorder? That's the craziest thing I've heard since... well, since the Iran war, I guess, so not very long. Still, that's nuts. I cannot imagine the world view that it must take to look at happiness that way.
Re: A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder (1992)
#3Ahh 1992. At the time he probably didn’t know he needed to add a /s or he’d be taken seriously in our delusional future.
Re: A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder (1992)
#4Woosh
Re: A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder (1992)
#5Reminded of that episode of House where the lady with dormant syphillis had something like this.
I wonder are there any ways I can contract this without breaking marital vows
Re: A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder (1992)
#6Ahh 1992. At the time he probably didn’t know he needed to add a /s or he’d be taken seriously in our delusional future.
Or was the nineties, so it would have been a “not!” or a “psych!”
Re: A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder (1992)
#7I'm assuming this is some kind of jab at the general propensity of psychiatry to classify most things as disorders, rather than a serious proposal. If anything, I think the problem has gotten worse since this was published. (Then again, maybe happiness has also gotten more rare since 1992?)
Re: A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder (1992)
#8Wait, this isn't April 1st! Seriously, happiness is a psychiatric disorder? Rare, sure, but a disorder ? That's the craziest thing I've heard since... well, since the Iran war, I guess, so not very long. Still, that's nuts. I cannot imagine the world view that it must take to look at happiness that way.
It's more of a comment on the absurdity of what is and is not defined as a disorder i believe.
Re: A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder (1992)
#9it's Catch-22. the world is such a mess that if you're happy, you must be delusional.
Re: A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder (1992)
#10I really liked this paper. I think it's less of an outright joke that it's possible to squint your eyes and laugh that happiness could be a disorder, and more of shining a light on the psychopathological system that tends towards over-diagnosis and hyperfixation on those diagnoses.
"If our so-called scientific system were really objective and honest, it would include happiness as a disorder." I think this is the goal the paper is trying to expose, more than just making a joke about mapping a good feeling to a description of a bad feeling. Indeed, I think the last line of the paper gives it away - our current system is very incomplete and needs to be extended:
> Indeed, only a psychopathology that openly declares the relevance of values to classification could persist in excluding happiness from the psychiatric disorders.