You really could have fooled me, and you have YET AGAIN missed the entire point of what I am saying: labeling something as entirely invalid and not to be considered due to a small part of the organization maybe doing questionable things is NOT a rational, sound, or fair reason to write it off. You can not paint it with a broad stroke brush.
That also does not dismiss the fact that it is, fundamentally, only quasi-empirical and rests completely on an appeal to authority fallacy. It may be otherwise functional in some regards, but it is regarded by many as a thoroughly proved hard science which is, in fact, fraud. I like the MBTI typology, I believe it is an adequate classification system which, nevertheless, doesn't take into account the true spectrum of human behavior and can never adequately describe any one individual. Similarly, I believe schizophrenia is a real disease as I've met and read the writings of people with actual schizophrenia. I've also read the writings of people who have been said to be schizophrenic and been skeptical.
For many years the East German Stasi practiced a form of "no-touch torture" called "Zersetzung" which involved gaslighting, slander, libel, stalking, women and men posing as romantic interests, and a number of other techniques designed to deliberately destroy an individual's life. Barring the knowledge of this practice, any person who claimed to be victim to this could easily be dismissed as having a mental disorder, furthering the gaslighting effect that the victim of the communist regimes torture had on the target. The CIA also extensively experimented with no-touch torture methods and it still is not illegal in the United States and I doubt most of the E.U..
This is one of the many problems of failing to live up to the rigorous standards of evidence based medicine. By asserting that all disorders can be diagnosed symptomatically, both a wide range of actual disorders and non-disorders can become classified under the same diagnosis. Because the DSM presents itself as more empirical than it actually is, it is of greater risk for this than internal medicine. If I have HIV, there are empirical tests that can confirm that to me. If I have schizophrenia, there isn't a single empirical test to confirm that - it is purely a subjective analysis of a set of apparent behaviors by the attending psychiatrist. These behaviors might be the same disorder that is present in a majority of schizophrenia patients or it could be a completely different disorder which manifests the same symptoms or it could be, as in the case of zersetzung, no disorder at all, but merely an accurate description of actual events which are misinterpreted according to a set rubric of behavioral disorders.
The problem with the APA is not that it says some disorders exist, but that it pretends to have as concrete a grasp on them as medical science does on physiological malfunctions. If the APA wanted to have more of my trust, they would be more open about how subjective psychological analysis actually is and how the disorders are not cut and dry and well understood - but merely subjective analysis of undesirable behavioral traits common to multiple individuals. However, it is not in the APA's interest to be open with how subjective their science actually is in a world that wants quick fixes to any particular problem which arises.
My distrust of the entire psychological establishment rests on its lack of empiricism and its appeals to authority. That doesn't mean I believe all psychology is useless. When they combine their tendency to overstate the solidness of their science with malevolent violations of the Nuremberg Code, however, it ensures I will not contribute to their organization in any way, financially or otherwise.
I guess I misstated how I felt about it: I hate deception, particularly dogmatic deception... I see the lack of solid empiricism in psychology combined with a rigorous belief that it is as solid as medical science as deception... therefore I have strong personal feelings about that.
