Not content with the merely weird, the DSM-IV also attempts to claim dominion over the mundane. Current among the many symptoms of the deranged mind are bad writing (315.2, and its associated symptom, poor handwriting); coffee drinking, including coffee nerves (305.90), bad coffee nerves (292.89), inability to sleep after drinking too much coffee (292.89), and something that probably has something to do with coffee, though the therapist can’t put his finger on it (292.9); shyness (299.80), (also known as Asperger’s Disorder); sleepwalking (307.46); jet lag (307.45); snobbery (301.7, a subset of Antisocial Personality Disorder); and insomnia (307.42); to say nothing of tobacco smoking, which includes both getting hooked (305.10) and going cold turkey (292.0). You were out of your mind the last time you have a nightmare (307.47). Clumsiness is now a mental illness (315.4). So is playing video games (Malingering, V65.2). So is doing just about anything “vigorously.” So, under certain circumstances, is falling asleep at night.

The foregoing list is neither random nor trivial, nor does it represent the sort of editorial oversight that occurs when, say, an otherwise reputable zoology text contains the claim that goats breathe through their ears. We are here confronted with a worldview where everything is a symptom and the predominant color is a shade of therapeutic gray. This has the advantage of making the therapist’s job both remarkably simple and remarkably lucrative.