Downing Street Memo and the real DSM

I’m not sure what to make of certain kinds of coincidences. How does one make sense of the fact that we all dial 911 in an emergency while 9/11 more or less proved that America’s emergency response system didn’t work in a real EMERGENCY? In the last week, I’ve been seeing references to the Downing Street Memo as the “DSM” which is also the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. So which disorder in the DSM is best described by the Downing Street Memo? There are a number of candidates including, Disassociative Disorder, Depersonalization Disorder, and perhaps the best candidate of all Antisocial Personality Disorder 301.7 in the DSM.
Here are some of the DSM sysmptoms for Antisocial Personality...


1. failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest
2. deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure
3. impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
4. irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults
5. reckless disregard for safety of self or others
6. consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations
7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another

They are afraid of intimacy and of assuming responsibility for it. They cannot believe that others can tolerate their anxiety, and all devoutly fear responsibility for achieving success by open competition. They can neither identify with authority nor accept this criticism, and they resent any thwarting of their actions, even when such intervention is clearly in their interest. Their consciences are too rigid, not too lenient, and so they reject all moral standards and ideals, rather than experience their punitive self-judgment.
Source Article Quoted on Discussion of Treatment
Before treatment can begin, firm limits are critical. The therapist must find some way of dealing with the patient's self-defeating behavior. To overcome the patients' fear of intimacy, the therapist must frustrate the patient's wish to run from tenderness and from the honest pain of human encounter...

We have to remember that the DSM is a relatively new way to catalog and conceptualize mental disorders. The ancient belief was that mental illness was the result of being possessed by supernatural forces.

Comments
In short, the Antisocial personality disorder individual, they used to call them “sociopaths”, is just the sort of person who would take a 911 call and have no compunction about turning it into a means to exploit the callers in the name of protecting them from further harm. Now that the Downing Street Memo (DSM) has provided us with the diagnosis and now that we know that calling 911 doesn’t work for a danger of this magnitude (see Office of Homeland Securingity threat level codes), what are going to do to treat it?

My suggestion, put the President, without benefit of either body armor or black boxes in the back of his suit, on Oprah for an hour long show with Pat Tillman’s family and say a few thousand victims of our twin war in Iraq and on the Earth itself. Let the world watch and come to its own conclusions about the sort of people who currently have custody of the “football”. My guess is you won’t have to look at the DSM or even at the Downing Street Memo to see that there’s a problem that needs to be “fixed”.
chancelucky
chancelucky