Intermittent Explosive Disorder

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.This week’s item is from The Los Angeles Times June 18, 2006, with a headline:Intermittent Explosive Disorder.The following are excerpts.Most who brave the Los Angeles freeways have experienced the warm, fuzzy ministry of another motorist cutting into their land while waving the international friendship sign.This can render even the most laid-back Prius-driving yoga master a bit testy.But for a small number of people this minor driving altercation will spark rage so profound, so visceral that it leads to car chases, fisticuffs, and maybe even a few nights in the slammer.Now researchers say these people may be suffering from a seldom studied condition known as, Intermittent Explosive Disorder, a condition that could be twice as prevalent as thought.As many as 8.5 million Americans may experience the disorder, says Ronald Kessler, a professor of health care policy at HarvardMedicalSchool.Kessler and colleagues found that the disorder tends to appear in late childhood or early teens, and that it is 40% more prevalent in males than in females.As characterized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the standard diagnostic reference book for psychotherapists, a person with Intermittent Explosive Disorder has, on several occasions, been unable to resist aggressive impulses that result in serious harm to individuals or property.I’m uneasy with the medication of this misbehavior, says Dr. Leonard Saks, a family physician and psychologist in Montgomery County, Maryland.The author of, Why Gender Matters, Saks believes that society is increasingly applying psychological labels to what he believes could be characterized as bad behavior,And further, some suggest that clinicians need to be careful about labeling clients with the disorder.

Tom:

Well, Dave, as we have talked about in many of our programs, especially when we address psychology from a Biblical perspective, they just keep coming up with things.Whatever aspect of living now is a disease, mental disorder, DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, keeps growing and growing and growing.It started out, I think it was 106 disorders back in the 1950s, now we have---

Dave:

Well, before that, Tom, in the 30s you were either crazy or not.I remember, we had insane asylums, and in our fellowship we used to go in and visit some and try to preach the gospel to them.That’s all it was, it was an insane asylum.

Tom:

But now we have 374 mental disorders, and of course one of the gimmicks for the DSM is, that’s how you get paid by insurance companies.If you can find a numbered disorder, you can send it in and get your money back.But this is ludicrous but it’s accepted, it’s growing, it’s the way people think nowadays.Whatever it may be, shyness, anxiety disorder, all these things.It’s sad, but the worst part of it is, the church is buying into this.Dave, not too long ago, Pat Robertson’s RegentUniversity, ran an ad in a professional psychological magazine and he had the DSM, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, on top of the Bible, and the ad read:Read any good books lately?That’s really a tragedy!

Dave:

Tom, most people probably don’t know, when we first met you had been a Hollywood script writer, and I had a lot of exciting stories, and you thought maybe we could get together and write a script for some of these, and in fact, we spent almost a year writing a script for, the book is out there---Mind Invaders---right now, and it’s been registered with the Screenwriter’s Guild for how long?

Tom:

I think it’s in moth balls.

Dave:

Yeah, but anyway, I’ve got an inspiration, Tom, I think we could write just a fantastic comedy for TV, about this whole psychiatric thing.Then it says:“This aggressive behavior kind of kicks in when you’re in your teens and so forth.”I have seen it in toddlers, a rage to get their own way.Little babies lying in a crib, you can’t even change their diaper they are so determined.Come on!This is just part of the fallen nature of mankind, self-centeredness, but Tom, it really makes really humorous reading.

Tom:

Well, Dave, if we ever get around to it, and I doubt we will, I still like, “What About Bob?”That’s my favorite movie on this issue.But it’s really sad because we have an industry, the psychology industry that’s just---we have a book called, Manufacturing Victims, and the premise is, this is an industry based on greed and there is no way around it.You read the statistics, you read what goes on in that field, and it’s a major tragedy, I believe.

Dave:

Tom, what is the basis of this?The basis of it is that psychology, psychiatry, the highest percentage of atheists in any profession, they are determined to get along without God.They are determined that man is not morally accountable to his Creator.It’s not sin, there is nothing wrong, but we are stimulus response mechanisms and it’s all programmed into us from childhood, and so forth.

Tom:

Well, let me answer that, Dave.It’s self, it’s either self or God, and if there is no God then self is god.

Dave:

Of course.This is a morally bankrupt profession, and so they have to explain it away in some other way, it’s a disorder, an addiction, and so forth.Tom, it would be the funniest thing on the planet if it weren’t so tragic.

Tom:

But Dave, at least in this article there are some out there recognizing, some within the field, he’s a mental doctor and he’s also a psychologist, and he says he believes that what we are doing is we’re characterizing bad behavior, simply that, as a disease.

Dave:

Well, Thomas Szas, a non-practicing Jew, research psychiatrist, he said, Do you want to know what we’ve done?We’ve turned sin into a disease, and you Christians ought to take this back into the church, we’ve nothing to offer.So, who was it, the psychologist, psychiatrist there in Wichita, wrote a book, Whatever Happened To Sin?

Tom:

O, that was Miniger Clinic.

Dave:

Yeah, Miniger Clinic, right, Miniger wrote that book, Whatever Happened To Sin?That’s the problem, sin is moral behavior, self-centered, as you say, I am violating other people’s rights all formyself and I am denying God, and now let’s explain it away, it’s just a syndrome of some kind, and don’t judge me for this.