The Power Threat Meaning Framework and the Misinterpretation Theory

In 2018, the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology published the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF), a 414-page document that represents the most comprehensive attempt by a professional body to construct an alternative to psychiatric diagnosis. Led by Lucy Johnstone and Mary Boyle, with contributions from eight additional authors, PTMF proposes that emotional distress, unusual experiences, and troubled or troubling behaviour are intelligible responses to social and relational adversities and their cultural and ideological meanings (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). In 2025, the Misinterpretation Theory (Fejlfortolkningsteorien) was published in two volumes — one for the general reader and one for professionals — proposing that irrational anxiety is not a disease but a cognitive error: a misinterpretation of the body’s normal adrenaline reaction as evidence of pathology (Vinter, 2025a, 2025b). Both frameworks reject the disease model. Both argue that distress is meaningful rather than pathological. Both call for a paradigm shift. But they approach the problem from opposite directions: PTMF from the social context downward, the Misinterpretation Theory from the individual body upward. This creates a unique opportunity for comparison — not as competitors, but as potential complements that together might address a broader range of human distress than either can alone. A Shared Starting Point Both frameworks begin with the same empirical observation: there are no consistent associations between functional psychiatric diagnoses and any biological pathology or impairment, and nor have any biomarkers been identified (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018, Chapter 5). The Misinterpretation Theory reaches the same conclusion independently, citing the Danish Health Authority’s written confirmation that no biological tests exist for anxiety or depression (Vinter, 2025b). Both therefore reject the disease model not as a matter of opinion, but as a matter of evidence. From this shared starting point, however, the two frameworks diverge in how they explain what distress actually is, where it comes from, and what should be done about it. It is these divergences — and the spaces between them — that the present analysis examines.