Christopher Lane Shyness Reviewed in Examiner

Phobia or faux-bia?
The Examiner, October 23, 2007
Robin Tierner

WASHINGTON— Shyness, fear of public speaking, reluctance to dine alone in restaurants — common discomforts or mental disorders?

Medicalizing ordinary emotions has generated big business for the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatric profession. In the new book “Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness,” Christopher Lane examines the impact on health care and society when psychiatry’s bible, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), swelled from handbook into heavy tome detailing hundreds of new conditions such as social anxiety disorder, known as SAD.

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