part of the problem is that calling something a 'disorder' is often taken to imply that it is the person, the individual who presents who is the disordered, problematic one.

Szasz says that one can only metaphorically speak of a disordered society (or a disordered mind for that matter - but thats another story).

One day there was a doctor and he heard that a little boys grandfather was blaming his mother for making him sick. the doctor wanted to talk to the grandfather to explain that the boy had caught an infection and that it wasn't his mothers fault. the doctor explained to the grandfather about the pathogen that was causing the infection. the grandfather listened. when the doctor had finished the grandfather said that the boys mother didn't look after him properly. she didn't feed him nutritious food and she didn't keep the place hygenically clean. the grandfather said that the boys mother didn't look after him properly and that is why the boy got sick.

these two different ways of looking at the same thing (the internal dysfunction way and the environmental way) don't have to be mutually exclusive, of course. the medical model typically tends to focus on inner dysfunction such that it excludes contributory factors from the environment, however.

why were groups so keen to have conditions such as homosexuality taken out of the DSM? because they didn't think that people who were homosexual were disordered at all. they surely were harmed living in an intolerant society - but it was the social norms that needed to be changed rather than the sexual preference of those individuals. similarly, why is it that we consider 'sluggish schizophrenia' (a dx given to political dissentors in russia solely in virtue of their political dissent) to be an abuse of psychiatry? Why is it that we think the suggested dx category 'draeptomania' that was meant to be applied to slaves who 'pathologically' desired freedom from their masters is similarly an abuse of psychiatry? One may be unhappy being gay in a society that is predominantly hetero. One may be unhappy being dissatisfied with the political state of ones country. One may be unhappy being a slave to another person. We tend to have the intuition that these aren't disorderes, however. To regard them to be so is commonly regarded to be an abuse of psychiatry.

why should we be cautious about 'oppositional defiant disorder'? why... because we are pathologizing those who 'defy' or 'oppose' authorative figures. WITHOUT REGARD FOR WHAT THOSE AUTHORATIVE FIGURES ARE ATTEMPTING TO IMPOSE OR FORCE ON THOSE INDIVIDUALS. This dx seems strangely reminiscent of 'sluggish schizophrenia' to me... Which is to say... The pathologizing of individuals because we refuse to look at what it is about our society that these people are protesting against.