Interdisciplinary Review of General, Forensic, Prison and Military Psychiatry and Psychology and the related subjects of Behavior and Law with the occasional notes and comments by Michael Novakhov, M.D. (Mike Nova).
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Wednesday, May 9, 2012
James Phillips: "Indeed, psychiatric nosology and the DSMs provide a vast arena for what are, explicitly or not, hermeneutic deliberations. The progression from one DSM to the next is itself a strong reminder that these are historical documents that do not transcend their historical conditions."
Nowhere in contemporary psychiatry does this hermeneutics of
historicity, of multiple perspectives, [End Page 66] and of the exposure of
hidden assumptions, emerge more forcefully than in the area of diagnosis. It is
appropriate then that the first AAPP sponsored monograph should be entitled
Philosophical Perspectives on Psychiatric Diagnostic Classification
(Sadler, Wiggins, and Schwartz 1994). Indeed, psychiatric nosology and the
DSMs provide a vast arena for what are, explicitly or not, hermeneutic
deliberations. The progression from one DSM to the next is itself a strong
reminder that these are historical documents that do not transcend their
historical conditions. Hermeneutic considerations are engaged at the opening
bell with the famous (or infamous) statement that the DSM's diagnostic
statements are atheoretical. The notion of an atheoretical diagnosis is, of
course, an oxymoron hermeneutically.
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