Let me explain right up front, some of my best friends are psychiatrists. Having said that, let me also add this exculpatory caveat: some of them are just a tad unusual, one could even say odd. None of this should, however, be taken as derogatory of a profession that, someday, could well pronounce any of us, or all of us, bananas.

Common American folklore has it that the most powerful individuals in our society today either are elected officials or members of the secret Sicilian order known as the Mafia. Don't believe it, for thanks to legally granted powers, any dues-paying member of the American Psychiatric Association can sit either in his office or in a witness chair in a court of law and declare us clinically bonkers. At which point we will be hauled off to some poorly supported institution, with all the posh charm of a morgue, where we will remain until the same individual who put us there declares we can go home now.

Gov. Carnahan may have muscle and the guy in a black suit with no tie who lives in a quiet residential area in South St. Louis can put you on ice if you don't like his wife's cooking, but for sheer unmitigated power nobody touches a shrink.

Now that we understand the rules of life, let me be the first to warn you, and you and, yeah, you too. All of us, and that includes Clinton and Gingrich, are in mortal danger from the people I have so painstakingly warned you about. I don't mean to alarm you, and I am speaking in a low and controlled voice just as one whispers around a coiled rattlesnake while making a fast exit. Don't panic, try to stay calm and remember the consequences of hysterical screaming as you read this next sentence. The above noted American Psychiatric Association has just issued its latest, 886-page bible that bears the innocuous title, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. Or, as it is known in Freudian circles, the DSM-IV.

In case you're wondering why you should be concerned about the newest APA text, let me explain that this three-pound book has hundreds of pages of mental illnesses, some of them quite traditional and a frightening number of them brand, spanking new. In other words, there are as many 300 to 400 new illnesses that we commoners could be suffering from, which is another way of saying that the ability of psychiatrists to put you away for a lifetime is 300 to 400 percent greater than it was before DSM-IV hit Barnes & Noble.

Like a cookbook, this dictionary of psychosis is organized with seeming simplicity and clarity, while detailing all the quirks of millions of persons who, for one reason or another, believe they have been abducted by little green men from another planet or who will swear their mothers never really loved them. I'm asking you, in the name of all that is sane, do you want some doctor who charges you more for 50 minutes of small talk than you make in a month to be turned loose with a book that lists poor penmanship as a mental disorder? I'm not kidding. According to the new DSM-IV, if no one can read your writing, you're one sick puppy. If you can't sleep at night because you drank too much coffee earlier in the evening, the guys in white coats have a diagnosis for you. I'm not kidding; take it from someone who drinks too much coffee.

If you're shy, our doctor friends will tell you that you are suffering from a case of Asperger's Disorder. On the other hand, if you evidence snobbery while in the presence of the therapist, you're merely a victim of Antisocial Personality Disorder, a broad category that fits every one from Mother Theresa to Howard Stern. Clumsiness has even been classified a mental disorder, which qualifies me as certifiable since I fell off a tricycle at the age of two. I'm sure no shrink could resist asking me, "How did you feel when fell off that tricycle?"

In 1840, the first year anyone started categorizing human behavior, there was exactly one mental illness: madness/idiocy/insanity. After World War II, modern psychiatry began listing numerous behavioral quirks that were the result of being shot at by some Axis fruitcake. By the time DSM-III came out in 1980, you were believed to be bonkers if you only thought you might be homosexual. But, ah, this latest edition has expanded mental illness beyond imagination. At least mine.

My advice to you is quite sane: Take your psychiatrist to lunch, speak softly and take the Fifth. And, please, whatever you do, don't mention my name!

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.