Dr. Patrick SingyExcerpt of Editorial Letter in the Journal Archives of Sexual Behavior:

Several psychiatrists and psychologists have recently made important criticisms of specific diagnostic innovations proposed by the DSM-5’s Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group (DeClue, 2009; Frances, 2010; Green, 2010; O’Donohue, 2010). As a historian and philosopher of science, my goal here is more general: I want to show that what this Work Group is trying to accomplish undermines the definitions of ‘‘paraphilia’’ and ‘‘mental disorder’’ that have been operative since the DSM-III. If the revisions proposed by the Work Group are implemented, the DSM-5 will be closer to the DSM-I and DSM-II than to their successors. In order to understand why this is so, we need first to take a short historical detour and to look at how ‘‘mental disorder’’ and ‘‘paraphilias’’ have traditionally been defined. Only then will we be in a position to grasp the magnitude of what the DSM-5 is trying to accomplish.

**For entire article: open PDF