Pression des nouvelles mentalités sur le DSM - le cas des problèmes religieux ou spirituels

Successive editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) punctuate the history of psychiatry since 1980, with each time a revision of classifications. The new axes and categories appear to vary depending on negotiations with social groups rater than on a scientific basis. The DSM then operate as a psychological mirror of the society in which it develops. This permeability to social field expectations and to pressures of new attitudes is examined through the category “religious or spiritual problems” created in the edition of the DSM-IV 1994. Pressed by the arguments of proponents of Transpersonal Psychology, the American Psychiatric Association has defined a category of distressing religious or spiritual experience that may appear as a mental disorder when out of its context, but is merely a “normal reaction” not to evaluate as a pathology. The arguments of transpersonal psychologists are here the subject of a critical analysis. When defining normality in relation to religions and spiritualities, the DSM has opened the door to a series of experiences with blurred contours in a very important reversal of the relation between psychiatry and beliefs. But there is concern that this approach of these experiences without pathology could encourage a psychic economy with confusing subjectivity and a narcissistic focus on fascinating experiences.