So the problem is that Adobe made a boneheaded mistake in the packaging of the program files.  Or to put it another way, the way they choose the installation was non standard, non intuitive and non mac-like.  Do they hate the Mac platform with this lack of attention to detail?

Thanks Thomas A Reed for this solution.  ”Open the disk, then open the Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 folder, then open the Setup app (which looks like a folder, thanks to the stupid icon). I don’t know what the heck Adobe was thinking packaging it like this. I’m no slouch with computers, yet even I overlooked that Setup item, amongst all the other folders. Installers, or at least an alias to them, should be at the root level of the install disk, rather than buried in folders with cryptic names.”