On my mind

Last month historian Edward Shorter accused the DSM of accelerating “the trend of making variants on the spectrum of everyday behavior into diseases: turning grief into depression, apprehension into anxiety, and boyishness into hyperactivity.’’ Just a week ago in The New Yorker, Harvard professor Louis Menand called out the shrinks for the “blatant pathologization of a common personality trait’’ — shyness — “for the financial benefit of the psychiatric profession and the pharmaceutical industry.’’

We all agree on one thing: Desperate to sell drugs, psychiatrists use their “scientific’’ manual to identify an ever-broadening panoply of absurd new syndromes amenable to pharmaceutical cure. But what if we are all wrong? Suppose the opposite is true? Perhaps the psychiatric profession has been far too conservative about proclaiming new, treatable disorders. Here is my own modest list of psychological problems that I hope to see addressed when the new DSM-V is published, three years from now:

Dysphoric iPhobia, or single cell anomia: the counterintuitive feeling that somehow I can survive in the 21st century without owning an iPhone, and its impossible-to-resist “apps.’’ Or the forthcoming iPad, another, pointless $500 geegaw. My junky Verizon cellphone serves me fine.

Carlomanic Dipolar Disorder: A sneaking suspicion that Great Britain’s Prince Charles has been right about everything, all along. He was right about modern architecture (“a rash of carbuncles’’), and he was right about Rudolf Steiner’s farming techniques. Have you tasted Charles’s Duchy Original oat biscuits? They are good! And he was right about Princess Di, of course, though no one wants to admit that.

Premature evacuation syndrome: Ever since the Celtics-Lakers series of the 1980s, I have been unable to watch the final five minutes of any closely contested sports event. I missed all the ninth innings of the Red Sox’ amazing 2004 ALCS comeback wins. Too tense! I had to strap myself into my chair to watch last month’s Olympic hockey championship overtime, which at least had a desirable end.

Tele-glossolalia, also known as Jabbertalky. You see sufferers of this common malady everywhere: out-of work members of the criminal defense bar; B-list authors; “commentators’’ for unknown blogs with lots of z’s in them, e.g. InziderzPolitix.com. They are serried in tiny video screens arrayed behind Joe Scarborough or Nancy Grace, waiting to say one really stupid thing, and then go home. Madness.

Noncredibilia, or The God That Failed syndrome: Doctor, I know I am supposed to believe that Bill Belichick is the greatest football mind who ever lived, and that Tom Brady is The One. And yet they seem to me like talented men whose moment has come and gone. Ditto for Daisuke, Mike Lowell, and Big Papi, not that you asked.

Gearfab fantasia, or Gryllsophilia: Every time I receive an e-mail from REI, Campmor.com, or Sahalie, I buy some new outdoor “gear’’ that I will never, ever use. I haven’t left my house since the turn of the century, except to vote against Democrats. So why do I need “Vibram FiveFingers Sprint Multisport shoes’’? I can’t explain it. They just sound . . . necessary. Yes, I know that Discovery Channel outdoorsman Bear Grylls has his own clothing line. Please do not give him my e-dress.

Recessive digitalia: A deep-seated belief that if you read something that is published exclusively on the Internet, it probably isn’t true.

Dysnomic Reversion Perplex: Why did Comcast start billing me for “Xfinity services’’? What the heck are those? (Answer: Same old rip-off, e.g. $5-a-month modem rental, jazzy new name.) Why did American Cable Systems rename itself Comcast, anyway? Why did KeySpan become National Grid? Or was it vice versa? Doubtless, a consultant made a lot of dough in that “rebranding.’’ For that matter, why did Esso (Standard Oil; get it?) become Exxon?

Surely some pills exist to combat these vexing disorders.

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.