I would also suggest that if the subjective anxiety were preventing me from accomplishing my wants that it would be at the level of a pathology. For example, I have no desire to go up on scaffolding, but if I were an agoraphobe who was missing my child's wedding because I could not bring myself to go into public, I believe that condition would be interfering with my wants.

Clearly, I do believe that there are some conditions where subjective distress is indicative of a disorder. However, I also fervently believe that both psychologists and psychiatrists are likely to over diagnose people, turning normal variation into illness. Normal and average are not the same thing, and they should not be treated as such by mental health professionals. I believe that simple phobias are probably the best candidate for being excluded from the DSM. Specific phobias rarely meaningfully impact quality of...
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