
Classifying Psychopathology
Mental Kinds and Natural Kinds
MIT Press
Published on 4. April 2014
Book
Hardback
296 pages
978-0-262-02705-2 (ISBN)
Description
Scholars question the extent to which current psychiatric classification systems are inadequate for diagnosis, treatment, and research of mental disorders and offer suggestions for improvement. In this volume, leading philosophers of psychiatry examine psychiatric classification systems, including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), asking whether current systems are sufficient for effective diagnosis, treatment, and research. Doing so, they take up the question of whether mental disorders are natural kinds, grounded in something in the outside world. Psychiatric categories based on natural kinds should group phenomena in such a way that they are subject to the same type of causal explanations and respond similarly to the same type of causal interventions. When these categories do not evince such groupings, there is reason to revise existing classifications.The contributors all question current psychiatric classifications systems and the assumptions on which they are based. They differ, however, as to why and to what extent the categories are inadequate and how to address the problem. Topics discussed include taxometric methods for identifying natural kinds, the error and bias inherent in DSM categories, and the complexities involved in classifying such specific mental disorders as "oppositional defiance disorder" and pathological gambling.Contributors
George Graham, Nick Haslam, Allan Horwitz, Harold Kincaid, Dominic Murphy, Jeffrey Poland, Nancy Nyquist Potter, Don Ross, Dan Stein, Jacqueline Sullivan, Serife Tekin, Peter Zachar
George Graham, Nick Haslam, Allan Horwitz, Harold Kincaid, Dominic Murphy, Jeffrey Poland, Nancy Nyquist Potter, Don Ross, Dan Stein, Jacqueline Sullivan, Serife Tekin, Peter Zachar
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass.
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Interest Age: From 18 years
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
7 s/w Abbildungen, 3 Tabellen
7 b&w illus., 3 tables
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-262-02705-2 (9780262027052)
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E-Book
04/2014
MIT Press
€43.99
Available for download
Persons
Harold Kincaid is Professor in the School of Economics and Director of the Research Unit in Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics at the University of Cape Town. He is the coeditor of Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context and What Is Addiction? (both published by the MIT Press). Jacqueline A. Sullivan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Western University, London, Ontario, and a member of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. She is the author of multiple recent journal articles on topics in philosophy of neuroscience.