A Critical Approach to Abnormality 247procedures is for information collected about the lives of those diagnosed
to form ever more complex constellations of diagnostic relations (see
Petzschner et al., 2017). And yet, such wholesale commitments to
technological progressivism only seem to further align psy-professions
with the neoliberal market policies outlined by McGuire, referred to above
as ‘data capitalism.’ For instance, it remains to be seen exactly how and
where all of this information will be stored, protected, and distributed.
Such issues require a technical expertise that exists almost entirely outside
of the purview of clinical psychology or psychiatry. But perhaps more
importantly, such technologies cannot interpret data on their own. With a
greater amount of data collected and stored in transnational databases,
issues related to power and social context only become more pervasive
concerns in the context of a globalized industry of mental health care
(Cosgrove & Karter, 2018).
Such concerns are at the basis of recent efforts by the British
Psychological Society (BPS) to meet growing demands for alternatives to
the functional psychiatric diagnoses underlying the DSM and ICD,
respectively. As Karter and Kamens (2019) overview, in 2011 the BPS
issued a formal statement critiquing proposed changes in the DSM-5,
which was supported by dozens of psychiatrists including Allen Frances.
Moving beyond the biomedical approach outlined so far, the Power Threat
Meaning Framework (Johnstone et al., 2018), developed with the support
of the BPS, shifts the focus from symptom diagnosis to pattern-
identification and more general forms of psychosocial clustering. Here,
‘symptoms’ of psychological suffering are resituated within parameters
that consider the role of institutional power, the role of normal responses to
perceived threat, as well as communal and personal narratives and
discourses. From this perspective, determinations about which behaviors
constitute symptoms versus socially appropriate responses are not made
solely by referencing a professional manual or body of research. Rather,
they are guided by the narratives and discourses offered by the person
seeking treatment. Insofar as this expands who can contribute to the
identification and treatment of ‘symptoms,’ this likewise broadens the