The DSM is of great value in the practical understanding of ordinary people. While ever a work in progress, and occasionally plain wrong, it is reasonably explanatory, deep, and multi-dimensional, and based on experience gained over at least a century.

Don't get thrown by the word “psychiatric in the DSM’s title.” It doesn't mean everyone is nuts! The DSM is useful because it brings theory down to practice, since it's used to understand and predict the behavior of real people with real characteristics; it's not a just a set of abstractions. The descriptions of people indicate real ways they behave, not just in terms of pathology, but also personality, real life situation, and other dimensions. If you understand them from this multi-dimensional, diagnostic point of view, you're on the way to specific things of predictive value, such as how, where, and when you can trust them, where and how they will fail you in relationships, and what their capacity for intimacy is. So personality diagnosis based on traditional psychiatry isn't just applicable to oddballs!

Note also that the DSM can be applied to people at a distance, in situations where they are unlikely to cooperate, and does not require the use of tests.

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