Will any of Arnold's Psychological syndromes make the DSM 5?

The DSM 5 is being prepared for publication. This will be the 5th edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (universally to be known as the DSM-5). The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders brings in $6.5 million in sales on average each year. The book is the basis of psychiatrists’ authority to pronounce upon our mental health, to command health care dollars from insurance companies for treatment and from government agencies for research. It is as important to psychiatrists as the Constitution is to the US government or the Bible is to Christians. Outside the profession, too, the DSM rules, serving as the authoritative text for psychologists, social workers, and other mental health workers; it is invoked by lawyers in arguing over the culpability of criminal defendants and by parents seeking school services for their children. It has influence qround the world.

So I wonder if nay of Arnold Holtzman's 71 new psychological syndromes will be included in the new edition? And even if they are, has he hitched his wagon to the wrong star? See this excellent article in Wired: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_dsmv/all/1.

Handreadered wrote:Will any of Arnold's Psychological syndromes make the DSM 5?

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So I wonder if nay of Arnold Holtzman's 71 new psychological syndromes will be included in the new edition?

Hi Ed,

My short answer to your question would be a simple: 'no'.


My longer answer includes the following notes & observations:

Basically, I would advice anyone not to associate Holtzman's 'hidden syndromes' with the DSM manual for 2 reasons:

- 1) Holtzman didn't describe that his 71 'hidden syndromes' should be recognized as a missing key in the perspective of the DSM manual;
- 2) None of the these 'hidden syndromes' have even been introduced - nor described - in the scientific literature nor in the international literature! Actually a search on the internet indicates that these syndromes have only been mentioned in Holtzman's books + websites of some of his associates.

So, I think this implicates that Holtzman's use of the word 'syndrome' is actually a bit confusing because formally the word refers to a certain kind of pathology & suffering involved; however Holtzman's use of the word 'hidden' suggests that the basic characteristics of his syndromes are usually unconscious to a certain level. And one should also be very aware that the hand characteristics involved... can sometimes even be described as: perfectly normal!

In his books Holtzman described that 'the schizoid temperament' was the very first 'hidden syndrome' that he described. Holtzman associated this syndrome with "... that the middle finger is the heaviest of the fingers" (by thickness; and length - e.g. 40% to 50% of the tip of the middle finger should outrange the tip of the index finger and the tip of the ring finger).

Ed, I think it should be obvious that Holtzman described in his very first 'hidden syndrome'... a relatively normal aspect of the hand!

So, beyond the vocabulary - I think Holtzman is usually talking about issues that relate to aspects of the daily life personality, in a psychoanalytic perspective.

This also explains why some of the most problematic examples of psycholopathology mentioned in the DSM manual - such as issues like: autism and schizophrenia - are not included in his work!

But I can understand you association, because Holtzman has included some of the personality disorders, ADD and ADHD in his work - which of course are mentioned in the DSM manual.



PS. My review of Holtzman's work includes a few more aspects about the position of his work (paragraph 1): The position of PDC in modern science

If the PDC practitioners are masking their work about problems in every day life in psychoanalytic language, how honest are they with the public that has been educated to consider psychoanalytic labels as indications of serious mental illnesses?

I would start with the preface to Arnold’s book “Psychodiagnostic Chirology in Analysis and Therapy” page vii:

“Psychodiagnostic Chirology (PDC) is based primarily on the theoretical conceptualizations and clinical orientation of Sigmund Freud, D. W. Winnicott, Abraham Maslow and Heinz Kohut. Freud’s introspective psychoanalytic constructions give common ground to Winnicott’s “Object Relations Theory, Kohut’s “Self-Psychology” and Maslow’s “Humanist” position (where the gravitation to self fulfillment and self-actualization are the central constructs).”

“PDC is a comprehensive diagnostic discipline applied by professional behavioral specialists in their clinical work. We may visualize it as a form of handreading in psychological diagnosis. Its origins are in the medical and molecular genetic science of dermatoglyphics, which uncovers in the dermal patterns of the palmar surface of the human hand (and foot_ constructions which have a bearing on a wide range of organic and largely inherited disorders.”

Arnold Holtzman is very clear. He is using the dermatoglyphics (and as we read his book other hand characteristics) to describe “organic and largely inherited disorders, and as one reads his book, disorders resulting from nurturing or lack of nurturing in life. In the U.S. such psychological labels, especially once they make their way into the medical literature, are permanent and can and do permanent damage to the subject so labeled. Drug companies find them quite useful for peddling drugs and so they are work enormous sums of money. You expressed outrage with a DMIT and the claim that its use could avoid some youthful suicides (which it may). Isn’t Arnold’s work much worse if all it does is describe the normal problems of life, yet labels the subject with some psychological syndrome?

Martijn:

You should travel more. Then you will have realized, at least in the eyes of Mary Lai and numbers of her supporters, that Arnold attempted to coopt her program that you and others call DMIT in 2006. He sought to make her program a part of PDC. She was furious and it caused a bit of a stir at her 2006 conference as a chill discended on the conference. While he did not attend that conference (sending only a video which almost was not shown) he did travel to Hong Kong apparently in his quest to co-opt MME or at least the English speaking leaders there. (See photos on his web site). Also one (Annette Levy) or more of his PDC practitioners traveled to Hong Kong to learn the MME system. I believe that Arnold taught a course in PDC in July 2007 in Hong Kong and Fritz Pang and Irene Tsang from New Horizons visited Israel perhaps in 2007. Arnold wrote to me on March, 2007 of his plans:

“PDC here has expanded considerably to include a clinical chapter that addresses neurotic and pathological disorders in children. So that beyond analysis it has expanded to include professional clinical intervention. That's quite a jump. You can have a fair idea then of the level of the new people who have come to identify with PDC. It is essentially in this clinical context that MME is expected to be incorporated into the work of our people.”

Mary Lai was not amused. However, any rift between Hong Kong and MME appears to have been mended by the time of the 2010 conference. Anyway, apparently Dr. Arnold Holtzman, Ph.D. has a much higher opinion of DMIT than you do. Mary now claims here program is in use in ten countries. Is Israel one of them?

Ed, thanks for the info!

I will contact Holtzman and invite him to comment on my summary of materials related to the DMIT test.

By the way, I remember that earlier last year (I think it was about 8 months ago) you informed me that Mary's method is actually slightly different from Lysander Poon's commercial DMIT spin-off from her research.

I am now wondering: did Holtzman really embrace the DMIT method.... or only Mary's approach?

Anyway, thanks for sharing!!

:

Ed and Martijn, thank you for inform us. - Manfred

This was an interesting article. Yesterday I watched a documentary called "Autism-Like: Graham's Story -- A film by Erik Linthorst." It does not address DSM V nor Arnold's latest works. However, it does bring to like how diagnosis, and specifically treatment, has often been driven by what qualifies for financial aid to help special needs children.

As it turned out, Graham has what is now being termed as Sensory Processing Disorder or SPD. There was no mention of hand analysis but it was very enlightening nonetheless.

Here is a link to the website for the documentary:

http://www.autisticlike.com/