The Feighner et al. paper was intended as a positivist reaction to promote the improvement of the diagnostic process. The authors of the Feighner paper were activists in the same way that the members of GAP had been activists. But the authors of the Feighner paper had a different agenda. Psychiatry is a branch of medicine. Psychiatry should utilize modern scientific methodologies and base its practice on scientific knowledge.
Psychiatry treats people who are sick and who require treatment for mental illness.
There is a boundary between the normal and the sick. There are many mental illnesses. Mental illness are not myths. There is not one, but many mental illnesses. It is the task of scientific psychiatry, as of other medical specialties, to investigate the causes, diagnosis, and treatment of these mental illnesses.