NY Times article on introversion

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Interesting read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/opinion/sunday/26shyness.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1

Great article, but next time post the link to start at the first page, not the last. ty.

Thanks, I really needed to read that. Go the NY Times!

"Before 1980, this would have seemed a strange question. Social anxiety disorder did not officially exist until it appeared in that year’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the DSM-III, the psychiatrist’s bible of mental disorders, under the name “social phobia.” It was not widely known until the 1990s, when pharmaceutical companies received F.D.A. approval to treat social anxiety with S.S.R.I.’s and poured tens of millions of dollars into advertising its existence. The current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the DSM-IV, acknowledges that stage fright (and shyness in social situations) is common and not necessarily a sign of illness. But it also says that diagnosis is warranted when anxiety “interferes significantly” with work performance or if the sufferer shows “marked distress” about it. According to this definition, the answer to our question is clear: the young woman in the ad is indeed sick."

V. interesting article. I often wonder whether the modern psychology approach is due to our individualistic society. Whenever an someone has something resembling a mental illness the focus seems to be on fixing the individual, when it's possible the environment is the true problem (although it's a lot harder to medicate the environment). Take aspergers, the notion of a cure gets thrown around a lot, again with the focus on 'correcting' the individual, deviation from normality is not inherently wrong. I'm sure a lot of AS individuals would function as well or better than the extrovert socialites given an accommodating environment.

Well, is not much different that almost all articles written about the E/I thing since Jung.