No, it isn't. H. sapiens is a crazy species. The world - physics, chemistry, biology - defines what's functional; humans routinely deviate from that base-line.
Psychology/psychiatry doesn't attempt to address that, it merely attempts to address the individual's ability to cope. It doesn't attempt to dictate terms to society, as there's no "template".
And that's what makes it not a science, but an industry. As an
industry, psychiatry is in the business of whipping non-conformists into line and punishing the rebellious. (Leave us not recite its dismal history!)
As a
discipline, it alleviates the some of the pain of non-conformity, much of the damage inflicted by a society's madness.
[S -- Sanity is measured - according to your earlier post - by what the average is doing.]
Overall, yes. But here's the thing....if you were living in those places and times that you exampled, you too would quite likely be involved the very same behaviors. So to look back and judge from this time and society isn't really all that fair, is it?
No, but I didn't want to get "political" by mentioning any more of presently prevailing insanities.
Anyway, I'm not 'judging' them; I'm using them as examples, any of a million readily available examples of human craziness. Of course, if I lived in another society, the shrinks (shamans, wise-women, juju-men, pastors) of that society would attempt to adjust me to
their normal... Well, except religious Germany - if the psychologists were Jewish, persecuted by both Protestants and Catholics; it would have been hard for them to predict which of the normals would win.
Look, even in my lifetime, society when I was 20 was totally different to what it is today. Different social values, different influences, different technologies...many of which has influenced these social changes. Do I like most of the changes? I like some of the technological advancements and some of the human rights we have developed, but most of the other changes, for me, are for the worse, not the better. But that's all driven by profits, self-interests and the Global Village becoming the Global Marketplace, not psychology/psychiatry.
Your job is just to adjust people who are incorrectly aligned.
[The reason I keep asking "What's normal?" and "What's functional?" is exactly that psychiatric diagnoses assume a steady state that most people simply don't experience.]
If a person has cancer, isn't that a label as well?
Good example! When I'm diagnosed with cancer, the pathologist knows exactly what a healthy squamous cell looks like and how it normally functions. That's the clearly defined base line from which the unhealthy cells deviate in a very specific way - demonstrably, visibly, measurably.
What do want us to do, not use labels but vague descriptors that continuously change so that no-one becomes "labelled"?!?
That's
precisely what I want you to do! I want you to treat each person as an individual, not as an illness. Many unhappy people are unhappy for very solid, rational reasons; many are too sane to accept their society's norms; many are collateral damage to some big event while others are products of societal mismanagement - there are an awful lot of cracks to fall through.
What you have now is vague descriptions that continuously change (refer to your own comment above), from which you collect a group of approximately related characteristics
Fear of abandonment. People with BPD are often terrified of being abandoned or left alone. ...
Unstable relationships. ...
Unclear or unstable self-image. ...
Impulsive, self-destructive behaviors. ...
Self-harm. ...
Extreme emotional swings. ...
Chronic feelings of emptiness. ...
Explosive anger.
not all of which need be present in each patient to make the diagnosis, and some of which may be appropriate responses to actual life events, and you pretend
that comprises a disease entity akin to cancer.
The label is for our use in order to relay a clear description of the problem in a way that then identifies treatments and for some, medications, as there are often other professionals involved in therapy. It's no fault of psychology/psychiatry that laypeople misuse labels and use these labels to denigrate others.
That's not the concern I expressed. The patient himself - the hyperactive or ADHD child, the manic-depressive, the sexual deviant - has to bear the treatment/punishment; has to wear the label, even in the mirror, even in their sleep. If the norms of society catch up with
their normal - well, oops, the joke's on us; if society's norm shifts in the other direction, they make easy targets.
FYI, the terms "crazy", "lunatic" and "madness" used to all be official terms, but due to society's misuse of these terms and the subsequent negative connotations that they created, the terms had to be changed. This is now happening today with terms like "psychotic" and "neurotic" because of the same misuse within the media and pop culture. So blame laypeople, not the profession.
Nobody could have foreseen this... Just as the financial industry couldn't be held responsible for, or expected to predict the meltdown.
Yes it is as simple as I stated, psychology/psychiatry doesn't attempt to "cure" the world or the prevailing society, it only attempts to give the individual better coping mechanisms.
Like dog-training. Adjust the animal to the unnatural environment in which it has to perform.
All I'm asking is that you consider the possibility that a person who doesn't fit comfortably into an insane, dysfunctional, counter-survival environment isn't necessarily the one that's sick.
And that, maybe the these BPD symptom-clusters are an attempt by individuals to fit meet the demands of a crazy environment. If/when all the symptoms become average, the disease entity will no longer exist.