hotomy that is made between the function of the organism (i.e., the patient) and the environment. They pointed out that over 230 of the behavioral criteria in the proposed DSMIII are not attributable to organic causes, and that many of the disorders, despite variance in etiological theories, are treated by modification of environmental factors as opposed to physical (medical) factors. Schacht and Nathan proposed that mental health professionals (and presumably the DSM-III Task Force) broaden their concept of "health" to include an ecological systems perspective which would place mental disorders not as a subset of medical disorders, but as "an intersecting set, in which the traditional elements of organismic dysfunction are part of the whole system" (Schacht & Nathan, 1977, p. 1023).
A second criticism that arose out of the "medical disorder" definition involved the feeling by mental health professionals that the DSM-III Task Force was attempting to legitimize the psychiatric profession and establish a professional identity that would diminish, if not exclude altogether, the importance of other professionals, including psychologists.
Spitzer and Endicott attempted to calm the storm of protest by indicating that the provocative definition was not the official view of the Task Force. The definition of mental disorder eventually approved by the Task Force made a limited attempt to allay psychologists' fears concerning emphasis on the medical model and a psychiatric power play:
No precise definition is available that unambiguously defines the boundaries of this concept ... However, in the DSM-III each of the mental disorders is conceptualized as a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern of an individual that is associated, by and large, with either a painful symptom (distress) or impairment in one or more important areas of functioning (disability) (Millon, 1983, p. 806).
However, the issues ...