"The Book of Woe" is an account of the compiling of the fifth edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders." The DSM was first published in 1952, and in the years since it has been subject to epochal revisions in which the foundations of the mental health professions have been reconceived and revamped. The DSM-5, plans for which were begun as early as 1999, is set to be published this month. The process of assembling it has been anything but smooth, as "The Book of Woe" relates.

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Newly published research suggests they could also be called the generation with unrealistic expectations.

An analysis of the values and ambitions of American 12th graders finds “a growing discrepancy between the desire for material rewards and the willingness to do the work usually required to earn them.” Psychologists Jean Twenge of San Diego State University and Tim Kasser of Knox College report that, for high school seniors in 2005, 2006, and 2007, materialism remained at historically high levels, even as commitment to hard work declined.

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Then the bombs went off, and the trauma set in.

Each American generation has its characteristic psychiatric diagnosis, and, typically, a drug or medication that represents the times. When the world was on the verge of blowing up in the Dr. Strangelove 1960s, we lived in the Age of Anxiety. Valium, the drug that symbolized that period, was celebrated in books and movies like "Valley of the Dolls" and songs like the Rolling Stones’ "Mother’s Little Helper." The 1970s was the Age of Malaise, and the drug that attempted to mediate that malaise was cocaine. Starting in the Prozac-fueled late 1980s and 1990s, the omnipresent diagnosis was depression. Later, the diagnosis was attention deficit disorder and the representative drug was Adderall.

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As my kids got older, approaching the age of the students I taught, a light bulb suddenly went on in my blinkered brain. Most of the kids I taught were just like my kids. They had parents who loved them, came from good communities and schools, had been nurtured and protected throughout their childhoods. Yet plenty of these kids didn’t seem to be happy. They were anxious, they were depressed, they were unenthusiastic about their work, and they were uncertain about their futures. I suddenly realized that happiness is not something to be taken for granted (I can hear you saying “duh!”). When I came to this blinding insight, my parenting aims turned on a dime. I also discovered that my wife had appreciated this all along, and that equipping our kids to be happy had always been part of her parenting agenda.

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That’s the implication of newly published research, which finds people who study science — or who are even momentarily exposed to the idea of scientific research — are more likely to condemn unethical behavior and more inclined to help others.

“Thinking about science leads individuals to endorse more stringent moral norms,” report psychologists Christine Ma-Kellams of Harvard University and Jim Blascovich of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Their research is published in the online journal PLOS One.

The researchers describe four experiments, all conducted at UCSB, that back up their surprising conclusion.

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There are few psychological effects better known—or more widely accepted—in academic halls than what is called semantic priming. Show a person a simple stimulus, something as unremarkable as a photograph of a cat. Let some time pass, then ask that same person to list as many words as possible that start with the letter c. This person is more likely not only to come up with the word cat, but to mention catlike animals such as cougars and cheetahs, because he was initially primed with that one little kitty cat.

Priming’s reach, of course, stretches far beyond cognitive tests. Therapists use it to help treat patients with depression during therapy sessions. Advertisers count on commercials to prime us to buy key brands during our trips to the mall or the grocery store. Priming is considered an underlying mechanism in stereotyping. And the word has become part of our cultural lexicon, too. We talk about how we are “primed” to feel, to want, to need, to talk. Priming is everywhere.

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Newly published research provides a plausible, albeit partial, answer: their unique ability to provide clear-headed counsel regarding romantic relationships.

“Our results suggest that straight women and gay men perceive mating advice provided by each other to be more trustworthy than similar advice offered by other individuals,” a team led by psychologist Eric Russell, a visiting researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, writes in the journal Evolutionary Psychology.

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I’ve thought about that question many times in the years since then, and my answer today is an even more resonant, “Yes.” It isn't that I'm so eager to die, but I can't help thinking about how destructive our fear of death is -- how it compels us to live, even when "living" may be little more than breathing; how we have made living, just to be alive, the unqualified objective. For me, that’s quite simply not enough. No, that’s not right. It isn’t “simple” at all. But I do have a concrete plan to end my life when I decide it’s time – and the tools to implement it. Will I have the courage to do it?

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•  Children aged older than 6 who "show frequent bursts of anger along with chronic irritability" may be diagnosed with "Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder." This diagnosis seems problematic to Autism Speaks', Geraldine Dawson, who said they remained "concerned about the impact of the new DSM-5 criteria when they are used in real world settings."
• Autism-related conditions will be lumped under the "autism spectrum disorder," an attempt to reorganize the current DSM by bunching them into a single category.

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As part of the study, a select group was shown a sad movie (this one, perhaps?) and were then asked to make financial decisions. Compared to subjects who had not watched the video, the sad group were far more likely to make choices that presented a short-term benefit, but were less profitable in the long run.

Blame it on "present bias," a phenomenon that makes us crave immediate gratification at the expense of even greater rewards later on. It's a tendency that many people exhibit in everyday life, but add a little melancholy into the mix and you've got yourself a recipe for financial disaster. Lead researcher Jennifer Lerner explains that "compared with neutral emotion, sadness -- and not just any negative emotion -- made people more myopic, and therefore willing to forgo greater future gains in return for instant gratification."

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Sacks, on the other hand, has always been fascinated by outliers. It's his professed belief that the underlying structures and functions of the brain can be most captivatingly glimpsed in the experiences of the man who mistook his wife for a hat and the man who kicked his own leg out of bed. This approach, not incidentally, also makes for much better stories than, say, descriptions of studies in which college students were asked to memorize numbers under trying circumstances. There's an aura of self-help surrounding most popular neuroscience books today, with all the banality that term implies. What the Sacks style lacks in personal applicability it makes up for in marvels. So much so, in fact, that filmmaker Wes Anderson offered a parody version of Sacks in "The Royal Tenenbaums": a shrink, played by Bill Murray, whose career is built on exhibiting his clients' freakishness to the public.

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I'm 46. I need help or advice on how to find a therapist. I have been in recovery since July 5, 2010. I have been working the AA program, with a sponsor, working the steps. My life is much better than it was when I was drinking -- so much better. If I try to stand outside of myself, I am awed at how it is better, in all ways, except ... I still don't have a desire to succeed in life. I don't really even have an active desire to be alive at all. I am not obsessed with thoughts of ending my life, but the thought is always there. It is not urgent, and it's not something I feel I want to act upon, but the thought is always there. I need assistance finding my way out of this thicket of thorns, and I am afraid and ashamed to ask for it.

My fingers hesitate to write more. My mother inflicted much physical pain on me from the time I was an infant. She slapped me in the face regularly, from the time I was an infant. People around knew of this and I don't know what they were expected to do but they did nothing. Well, an aunt walked out once, rather than witness it anymore. She speaks today of this action with pride. Way to go, aunt. Good for you. This abuse eventually became almost ritualistic in nature: I would have to kneel in front of my mother and she would raise her hand as high as she could and slap me as hard as she could. If I flinched, this fed her evil nature, and she'd repeat the action until I stopped flinching. I feel like I'm in a basement room full of dirt.

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This year my husband and I welcomed our first child.

I'm grateful to be mother to my little boy, more every day as I watch him develop into his own person. I'm writing because becoming a mother has dredged up some emotions, and I'm not sure how to act or feel. I am really confused.

As an adult I have developed a really close relationship with my parents. Things were a bit strained when I was a teenager, and I always assumed that was normal. However, during a recent visit, my mom brought up an ugly incident from my childhood, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that I have sanitized my childhood, because the distance I gained when I moved out allowed me to do so. The incident involved a heated argument in which my father, at the behest of my mother, punched my brother several times. This was not an isolated incident, but it was the worst of many violent arguments with my parents that we dismissed as "not abusive" because nobody's nose was broken and no teachers saw any bruises.

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Their findings, published in Psychological Science and picked up by the Economist, indicate that in men only there appears to be an alignment of physical strength and expressed political self-interest. The Economist reports:

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Michael was told – falsely – that his 12-year-old sister’s blood was found in his room, that his hair was discovered between her fingers and that his voice stress analyzer test showed deception. Eventually, Michael cracked. He told detectives he had no memory of the crime, but he would be willing to make something up for them.

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The corporatization of society requires a population that accepts control by authorities, and so when psychologists and psychiatrists began providing techniques that could control people, the corporatocracy embraced mental health professionals.

In psychologist B.F. Skinner’s best-selling book Beyond Freedom and Dignity  (1971), he argued that freedom and dignity are illusions that hinder the science of behavior modification, which he claimed could create a better-organized and happier society.

During the height of Skinner’s fame in the 1970s, it was obvious to anti-authoritarians such as Noam Chomsky (“The Case Against B.F. Skinner”) and Lewis Mumord that Skinner’s worldview—a society ruled by benevolent control freaks—was antithetical to democracy. In Skinner’s novel Walden Two (1948), his behaviorist hero states, “We do not take history seriously”; to which Lewis Mumford retorted, “And no wonder: if man knew no history, the Skinners would govern the world, as Skinner himself has modestly proposed in his behaviorist utopia.”

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Check out our slideshow of individuals who seem to support and challenge this study.

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