Kirk, Stuart and Herb Kutchins. The Selling of DSM: The Rhetoric of Science in Psychiatry

http://www.amazon.com/Selling-DSM-Rhetoric-Psychiatry-Problems/dp/0202304329/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421778211&sr=1-3&keywords=stuart+kirk

When it was first published in 1980, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition—univer­sally known as DSM-III—embodied a radical new method for identifying psychiatric illness. Kirk and Kutchins challenge the general understanding about the research data and the pro­cess that led to the peer acceptance of DSM-III. Their original and controversial reconstruction of that moment concen­trates on how a small group of researchers interpreted their findings about a specific problem—psychiatric reliability—to promote their beliefs about mental illness and to challenge the then-dominant Freudian paradigm.