What Would a Humanistic DSM - V Look Like ? —

Axis I: Anxiety, Mood, and Psychotic Disorders Rollo May’s Th e Meaning of Anxiety (Norton, 1977, revised edition), Viktor Frankl’s Th e Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy (Vintage, 1986, third edition), and Kirk Schneider’s Existential– Integrative Psychotherapy (Routledge, 2008) provide accounts of the succession from more healthy (e.g., constructive anxiety, phase of life problems, mild adjustment disorders) to less healthy (from anxiety to mood to psychotic disorders) on Axis I. May emphasized that there is “good” and “bad” anxiety, in the same way that the physical body requires a balance of high HDL and low LDL cholesterol, and that the denial of anxiety and of struggle as vital and essential aspects of the human condition lends itself to dampened sensibility (i.e. depression). In The title question was recently posted on a list-serve. Below is a composite summary of my responses. Th is is not intended as the fi nal word—but rather as a collection of gut impressions and working notes intended to disrupt fi xed systems of thinking and to inspire dialogue about diagnosis and classifi cation of mental health and suff ering in a way that is both clinically practical and sensitive to individuals’ lived experience. My primary proposal is that a humanistic DSM-V already exists in raw form. I have included both classic and contemporary references for conceptualizing mental disorders through humanistic, existential, and transpersonal lenses.