After reading through some of these reviews I think that it is safe to say that this manual is very easily misunderstood. The two main critiques seem to be that a) Big pharma and the insurance companies had their hands all over it, and b) we are pathologizing normal human behavior.
To address point a, there is not much to be said. It was pretty well established that they were involved. But to suggest that the whole manual is crap because of this is to give no credit to the scientists apart of the individual task forces. Do you really think that they would all roll over and let industry dictate science? If you think yes, then you don't know much about science or scientists.
To address point b, there are lots of problems with that critique. First, if you only read the few diagnosis that you care about, you are not trained to identify "clinically significant distress or impairment", or you don't have any idea why that's important, then you don't have the proper level of reference to to make this claim. The most often over looked section in ever diagnosis is the prevalence rate. This is where the pertinent data on prevalence in the general/clinical population is compiled. Most rates are not above single digits, and when you combine this with the high rates of comorbidity, the DSM does not seem to suggest that everyone could be diagnosed with a mental disorder, as many people seem to think.
Lastly, I want to say that, yes, psychopharmological drugs are over prescribed, and yes, some normal human behavior can be interpreted as pathological. But these are MISUSES of the DSM, and not a flaw of the manual in itself. The DSM makes it pretty clear in every diagnosis that unless you are a qualified mental health professional, you should probably not be diagnosing people all willy nilly. I'm looking at you GPs. My final note is that just because you are not a psychologist or counselor that does not mean you cannot read and understand this book. But if you approach this trying to find fault so you can dismiss the DSM you will find what you are looking for.