Who's Down with ODD?

Julian Sanchez | June 19, 2003

My father and I had plenty of political disagreements when I was a teenager. He was a social democrat who fled Franco in the 60s; I became a libertarian, more or less, sometime in high school. Fortunately, we managed to agree to disagree. Apparently, he could've decided that my bad ideas constituted a psychological disorder:

Alex Asch probably never thought he would be forced by police, private security, his parents, and the weight of the law to leave his choice of studies for a Mormon boot camp -- but on August 10, 2002 that's exactly what happened[....]

Alex was officially diagnosed with "Oppositional Defiance Disorder," which is defined as a disorder including symptoms such as often losing one's temper, arguing with adults, actively defying or refusing to comply with adults' requests, deliberately annoying people, blaming others for mistakes, being touchy or easily annoyed, and often being spiteful, vindictive, or angry.