Top 10 Controversial Psychiatric Disorders -Part 1

The proposed revisions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) have spurred debate over what illnesses to include in the essential psychiatric handbook. Everything from gender identity disorder to childhood mood swings has come under fire, and it's not the first time. The history of psychiatry is littered with impassioned fights over controversial diagnoses.

10. Hysteria -In the Victorian era, hysteria was a catch-all diagnosis for women in distress. The symptoms were vague (discontentment, weakness, outbursts of emotion, nerves) and the history sexist (Plato blamed the wanderings of an "unfruitful" uterus). The treatment for hysteria? "Hysterical paroxysm," also known as orgasm. Physicians would massage their patients' genitals either manually or with a vibrator, a task they found tedious but surprisingly uncontroversial. More contentious was the practice of putting "hysterical" women on bed rest or demanding that they not work or socialize, a treatment that often worsened anxiety or depression.According to a 2002 editorial in the journal Spinal Cord, the diagnosis of hysteria gradually petered out throughout the 20th century. By 1980, hysteria disappeared from the DSM in favor of newer diagnoses like conversion and dissociative disorders.

9. Penis Envy - Sigmund Freud revolutionized psychiatry in the late 1800s and early 1900s with his theories on the unconscious state, talk therapy and psychosexual development. Nowadays, many of these theories -- like his conclusion that young girls' sexual development is driven by jealousy over lack of a penis and sexual desire for their father -- seem outdated. But not everyone has consigned Freud to the dust heap. Organizations like the American Psychoanalytic Association still practice and promote Freudian-style psychoanalysis, and groups like the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society try to combine cutting-edge neuroscience research with Freud's century-old theories. How successful they'll be is unknown: A 2008 study in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association found that today's psychology departments rarely teach psychoanalysis.

Ed. note: From an article by Stephanie Pappas on LiveScience.