This is so authentic!
What if the DSM diagnosed colonialism instead of the individuals suffering under it? A groundbreaking new paper in American Psychologist by Kaori Wada & Karlee Fellner does just that—turning psychiatry’s “diagnostic bible” against itself.
Rather than locating distress inside individuals, the authors apply the DSM’s own clinical language to diagnose the systemic disorders of colonialism and capitalism. Greed? A substance addiction. Land accumulation? Pathological hoarding. Historical amnesia? A dissociative disorder.
They argue that psychiatric diagnosis, rather than simply being a neutral scientific tool, is a colonial technology—one that individualizes suffering while leaving its systemic causes unexamined. This process, which they call psycholonization, allows Western mental health systems to medicalize Indigenous distress while ignoring the historical traumas that produce it.
But Wada & Fellner don’t just critique—they invert. Using satire, they construct a set of “new” DSM disorders that diagnose the core dysfunctions of settler colonialism, including:
🔹 Addictive Disorder (Power, Wealth & Status Dependence) – A compulsive drive to hoard land, money, and resources at the expense of others. Requires increasing dominance to maintain satisfaction.
🔹 Selective Amnesia (Colonial Memory Disorder) – A persistent inability to recall historical injustices, replacing real history with comforting national myths.
🔹 Delusional Disorder: Grandiose & Persecutory Types – Beliefs in Eurosettler supremacy, coupled with extreme defensiveness whenever privilege is questioned.
This isn’t just a thought experiment—it’s a serious challenge to the foundations of Western psychiatry. What if diagnosis weren’t a tool for pathologizing individuals, but a means of exposing and addressing the deeper dysfunctions of empire?
Their article is especially significant because it appears in American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the APA. The fact that a critique this sharp, this radical, made it into such a mainstream venue suggests that the conversation around decolonizing psychology is shifting. The question is: Will the field actually listen?
Read our full research summary on Mad in America:
www.madinamerica.com/2025/02/turning-the-dsm-against-itself-diagnosing-the-disorders-of-power/
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