ABSTRACT
Psychiatrists have been in the habit of making similarly preposterous pronouncements about the epidemiology of mental illnesses and their therapeutic powers to prevent and cure them. Claiming that everyone is mentally ill came as easily to the lips of the most respected psychiatrists as claiming that all sinners go to hell came to the lips of the most revered clergymen. For a tiny corps of critics—psychiatric atheists, as it were—the scientific pretensions of mad doctors are self-evidently phony, on par with the pretensions of mesmerists and phrenologists. For the general public as well as the pillars of society—including the leaders in science, medicine, law, and politics —the discoveries, diagnoses, treatments, and theories of psychiatry are just as valid as those of any other branch of human knowledge. Nevertheless, Spears leaves open the possibility that the psychiatric nomenclature is, medically speaking, not a complete hoax.
