ABSTRACT
In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association put out a new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, its third. Spearheaded and edited by Robert L. Spitzer, the goal of the DSM-III was to create an “objective” psychiatry. This was to be a new paradigm that would set psychiatry on a firm scientific foundation.1 In deliberately objectifying symptoms by ignoring their meaning, the plan was to save psychiatry from the “soft,” subjective method of psychoanalysis that had informed the first two editions of the DSM. With this “hard,” objective, and scientific stance, it was anticipated that psychiatry would become more like the other medical specialties.
