The Importance of History for Philosophy of Psychiatry: The Case of the DSM and Psychiatric Classification*
In: Journal of the Philosophy of HistorySearch for other papers by Jonathan Y. Tsou in
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Abstract
Recently, some philosophers of psychiatry (viz., Rachel Cooper and Dominic Murphy) have analyzed the issue of psychiatric classification. This paper expands upon these analyses and seeks to demonstrate that a consideration of the history of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) can provide a rich and informative philosophical perspective for critically examining the issue of psychiatric classification. This case is intended to demonstrate the importance of history for philosophy of psychiatry, and more generally, the potential benefits of historically-informed approaches to philosophy of science.
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1)
R. Cooper, Classifying Madness: A Philosophical Examination of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005); D. Murphy, Psychiatry in the Scientific Image (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006).
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15)
See APA, DSM-II, 123. For a summary of how DSM-I classifications map onto DSM-II classifications, see APA, DSM-II, 65–82, 125.
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18)
See N. G. Hale, The Rise and Crisis of Psychoanalysis in America: Freud and the Americans, 1917–1985 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Grob, “Origins of DSM-I”.
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19)
T. S. Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1961); R. D. Laing, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (London: Tavistock Publications, 1959).
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20)
M. Foucault, Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie a l’âge classique (Paris: Plon, 1961). Foucault’s work was introduced to the United States by the significantly abridged English translation, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. R. Howard (New York: Pantheon, 1965).
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22)
See R. Bayer, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis (New York: Basic Books, 1981); R. Bayer and R. L. Spitzer, “Edited Correspondence on the Status of Homosexuality in DSM-III”, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 18 (1982), 32–52.
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23)
D. Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places”, Science 179 (1973), 250–258.
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24)
See Wilson, “DSM-III and the Transformation”; R. Mayes and A. V. Horwitz, “DSM-III and the Revolution in the Classification of Mental Illness”, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 41 (2005), 249–267.
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25)
See G. N. Grob, From Asylum to Community: Mental Health Policy in Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991); G. N. Grob, “The Paradox of Deinstitutionalization”, Society 32 (1995), 51–59.
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27)
A. V. Horwitz, Creating Mental Illness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), ch. 3.
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32)
Roger K. Blashfield, The Classification of Psychopathology: Neo-Kraepelinian and Quantitative Approaches (New York: Plenum Press, 1984) argues that Spitzer’s appointed task force formed an “invisible college” insofar as the group had close professional and social allegiances with one another, although these ties were not obvious to outsiders. Spitzer had especially close ties to a research group at Washington University in St. Louis who developed the influential “Feighner criteria”, a set of diagnostic criteria for fifteen mental disorders, which effectively served as a prototype for DSM-III diagnoses. See J. P. Feighner, E. Robins, S. B. Guze, R. A. Woodruff, G. Winokur, and R. Munoz, “Diagnostic Criteria for Use in Psychiatric Research”, Archives of General Psychiatry 26 (1972), 57–63.
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36)
See Klerman, “The Evolution of Scientific Nosology”, 104–105.
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38)
See Mayes and Horwitz, “DSM-III and the Revolution”, 259–261.
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41)
See Mayes and Horwitz, “DSM-III and the Revolution”, 261–263.
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42)
R. Bayer and R. L. Spitzer, “Neurosis, Psychodynamics, and DSM-III: A History of the Controversy”, Archives of General Psychiatry 42 (1985), 187–198.
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43)
Bayer and Spitzer, “Neurosis, Psychodynamics, and DSM-III”, 192.
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48)
Cited in Mayes and Horwitz, “DSM-III and the Revolution”, 262.
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51)
Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 184–185; T. S. Kuhn, “Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice” in T. S. Kuhn, The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 320–329; T. S. Kuhn, “Rationality and Theory Choice”, Journal of Philosophy 80 (1983), 563–570.
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66)
Hempel, “Fundamentals of Taxonomy”, 146–151. In this connection, Hempel, praises DSM-I for its adoption of an “etiological or generally theoretical account”, 149.
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67)
Hempel, “Fundamentals of Taxonomy”, 147–148. Hempel remarks that the modern periodic table of elements is organized by theoretical principles such that the subclasses of the table (e.g., the vertical columns or “groups”) reflect properties in the atomic structure of the elements. He also points out that while early biological taxonomic systems were purely descriptive insofar as its subclasses were determined exclusively by morphological characteristics – with the advent of the theory of evolution – this morphological basis was replaced by a classification system with a stronger theoretical (i.e., phylogenetic) basis.
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74)
See S. E. Hyman, “Can Neuroscience be Integrated into the DSM-V?”, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 8 (2007), 725–732; Regier et al., “The Conceptual Development of DSM-V”, 649.
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The Importance of History for Philosophy of Psychiatry: The Case of the DSM and Psychiatric Classification*
In: Journal of the Philosophy of HistorySearch for other papers by Jonathan Y. Tsou in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
Recently, some philosophers of psychiatry (viz., Rachel Cooper and Dominic Murphy) have analyzed the issue of psychiatric classification. This paper expands upon these analyses and seeks to demonstrate that a consideration of the history of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) can provide a rich and informative philosophical perspective for critically examining the issue of psychiatric classification. This case is intended to demonstrate the importance of history for philosophy of psychiatry, and more generally, the potential benefits of historically-informed approaches to philosophy of science.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1326 | 298 | 27 |
| Full Text Views | 445 | 41 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 501 | 86 | 3 |