Paula Caplan

Paula Caplan

Paula Joan Caplan (born July 7, 1947 in Springfield, Missouri) is a clinical and research psychologist. She is currently an Associate at Harvard University's DuBois Institute, working on the Voices of Diversity project, and a Fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program of the Kennedy School at Harvard. Previously she was full professor of psychology, assistant professor of psychiatry, and lecturer in Women's Studies at the University of Toronto, and was chosen by the American Psychological Association as an "eminent woman psychologist". She is the author of The Myth of Women's Masochism and Don't Blame Mother, plus a number of other books. Her twelfth and latest book is When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help Veterans, won the 2011 American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence in the Psychology category.

Since the 1980s, Caplan has had concerns about psychiatric diagnosis, and people being arbitrarily “slapped with a psychiatric label”. Caplan says psychiatric diagnosis is unregulated, so doctors aren’t required to spend much time understanding patients situations or to seek another doctor’s opinion. The criteria for allocating psychiatric labels are contained in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which can “lead a therapist to focus on narrow checklists of symptoms, with little consideration for what is causing the patient’s suffering”. So, according to Caplan, getting a psychiatric diagnosis and label often hinders recovery.