> An alternative reading is that he correctly identifies that the DSM is based on consensus and that where possible he would like to replace consensus with classifications built on additional modes of observations that have only recently become available.

An alternative to your comments would be for someone to read the original and discover that the problem is that, in psychiatry and psychology, these conditions are only described, not explained, and any meaningful treatment requires an explanation, an identified cause. Like in science.

> ... additional modes of observations ...

The issue is not "modes of observations", the issue is a widespread move toward using the methods of neuroscience to identify the causes of these conditions, and treating causes rather than symptoms.

> Your rhetoric reminds me of some of the other anti-psychology literature I've seen circulated by various organisations holding other beliefs that might be charitably considered as "exotic".

You aren't arguing against my views. You're arguing against the views of the director of the NIMH and dozens of other qualified critics including the editor of DSM-IV, all of whom hold the same general views I do. You're arguing against a historic move toward science.

> I'm not, but good luck with your Skinner Box vision of psychology.

It's instructive that you've posted no evidence for your position. As to a Skinner-box view of mental health treatment, I direct your attention to this account of deep brain stimulation, a procedure in which a neurosurgeon was able to erase all symptoms of depression in a severely depressed person by throwing a switch:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/magazine/02depression.html...

Quote: "Deanna later described it in similar terms. "It was literally like a switch being turned on that had been held down for years," she said. "All of a sudden they hit the spot, and I feel so calm and so peaceful. It was overwhelming to be able to process emotion on somebody's face. I'd been numb to that for so long."

"As it turned out, 8 of the 12 patients he operated on, including Deanna, felt their depressions lift while suffering minimal side effects — an incredible rate of effectiveness in patients so immovably depressed. Nor did they just vaguely recover. Their scores on the Hamilton depression scale, a standard used to measure the severity of depression, fell from the soul-deadening high 20's to the single digits — essentially normal."

End quote.

I emphasize this is a preliminary result, and at the moment it's expensive and risky invasive surgery, unsuitable for any but the severely depressed. My point is that I doubt the severely depressed clients who received this treatment will object that they're being turned into updated versions of B. F. Skinner's lab rats.

> In me you seem to see the fruits of a vast conspiracy against science and the public.

Locate that part of my posts in which this paranoid delusion finds support. There is no vast conspiracy, there is just mediocrity, denial and shortsightedness.

> ... by spreading the idea that depression or ADHD should simply be accepted and not treated.

Another example in which, with no evidence, you invent a position for someone else. The issue before psychiatry and psychology is not whether to treat or not to treat, the issue is that there is no reliable evidence that present treatments work. This is why alternatives are being explored, and why the DSM is finally being put aside.

> This one can't be settled satisfactorily.

Of course it can. Ask the director of the NIMH. Ask those who have received meaningful scientific treatments for depression. Ask the victims of recovered memory therapy whether they think that treatment merited the public support it received. This issue certainly can be resolved satisfactorily, and the first step has been taken -- the DSM, the "bible" of psychiatry and psychology, has been set aside as having no scientific value.