Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness [Hardcover]

"... compelling reading."
--Martin Guha, Journal of Mental Health, April 2009

'Fascinating... persuasive... should be read by anyone interested in stopping the rot in the discussion of human emotion and thought.'

'Lane's scholarly account... ensures that if you're not already concerned about the over-medicalisation of our mental lives, you will be.'

'... a detailed and searing account... do make the effort and read this book.'

'... a damning new book... [it] documents how a handful of psychiatrists... have 'rebranded' shyness as a mental illness.'

In the 1970s, a small group of leading psychiatrists met behind closed doors and literally rewrote the book on their profession. Revising and greatly expanding "The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM for short), they turned what had been a thin, spiral-bound handbook into a hefty tome. Almost overnight the number of diagnoses exploded. The result was a windfall for the pharmaceutical industry and a massive conflict of interest for psychiatry at large. This spellbinding book is the first behind-the-scenes account of what really happened and why. With unprecedented access to the American Psychiatric Association archives and previously classified memos from drug company executives, Christopher Lane unearths the disturbing truth: with little scientific justification and sometimes hilariously improbable rationales, hundreds of conditions, among them shyness, are now defined as psychiatric disorders and considered treatable with drugs. Lane shows how longstanding disagreements within the profession set the stage for these changes, and he assesses who has gained and what's been lost in the process of medicalizing emotions. With dry wit, he demolishes the facade of objective research behind which the revolution in psychiatry has hidden. He finds a profession riddled with backbiting and jockeying, and even more troubling, a profession increasingly beholden to its corporate sponsors.

Christopher Lane is professor of English, Northwestern University, and the recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship to study psychopharmacology and ethics. He is the author of many essays and several books on psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and culture, including Hatred and Civility: The Antisocial Life in Victorian England.