Word: spitzers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...women came to reason. But just in case reason did not suffice, they thought to mention the possibility of a massive lawsuit against the American Psychiatric Association, charging it with violating the civil rights of all women. The meeting was "very heated," according to its affable chairman, Psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, and in the end reason prevailed: "masochistic personality disorder," a red flag to feminist scholars for at least two decades, will not be an official diagnosis of American psychiatry after all. Instead, the proposed category will be known as "self-defeating personality disorder...
...Spitzer and his colleagues were happy enough to give up the word masochism, but seemed stunned by the determination to chip away at the concept behind it. The feminists seemed surprised and indignant that the meeting descended into the usual picturesque result of successful lobbying: a bit of old-fashioned horse trading. "At one point they offered us a deal," said Walker. "If we backed off on masochism, they would create a sadistic disorder to cover wife beaters." No deal. The group began to discuss a supposed hallmark of masochism, the willingness to endure pain. "Oh, you mean, like early...
...Spitzer's rebuttal: "They have never developed a category. It's easy to say it's chaotic and mock the use of the computer, but that's how a committee works. You put it on the screen so everybody can see it." He spoke in the aggrieved tones of a man who has just spent five hours bending over backward and is now being attacked anyway. Hanging in the air was the belief that masochism exists but henceforth no woman will ever be diagnosed as suffering from it because the women's movement would be disappointed. Some of the women...
Richard Simons, a Colorado psychoanalyst and writer on masochism who attended the session, agreed with Spitzer. "It's not scientifically valid to throw out a category merely because it might be misused," he said. Otherwise, Simons seemed to embrace the entire feminist position. Psychiatrists confronting battered women should not sit around pondering categories, he said. They should get out of their chairs and get the woman some physical protection. "The first thing you do is protect life and limb. A psychiatrist has that responsibility like anyone else." But in the current climate, could a psychiatrist find that a battered woman...
Next week Spitzer and some of his colleagues will address two more highly charged issues, both of intense interest to feminists: proposed categories for premenstrual syndrome and for men who rape compulsively. Feminists, aghast at the possibility of a legal defense built around the new disorder of "paraphilic rapism," are likely to see that it remains no category at all. --By John...