"Gary Greenberg has become the Dante of our psychiatric age, and the
DSM-5 is his Inferno." --Errol Morris
Since its debut in 1952, the American Psychiatric Association's
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has set down the
"official" view on what constitutes mental illness. Homosexuality, for
instance, was a mental illness until 1973. Each revision has created
controversy, but the DSM-5 has taken fire for encouraging doctors to
diagnose more illnesses--and to prescribe sometimes unnecessary or
harmful medications.
Respected author and practicing psychotherapist Gary Greenberg embedded
himself in the war that broke out over the fifth edition, and returned
with an unsettling tale. Exposing the deeply flawed process behind the
DSM-5's compilation, The Book of Woe reveals how the manual turns
suffering into a commodity--and made the APA its own biggest
beneficiary.