The Scientific Status of Psychiatric Diagnosis

  • Jules H. Masserman
Chapter

Abstract

Contrary to current protests that psychiatry has become too diffuse and “is riding madly off in all directions”, I propose that our discipline cannot be other than inclusive and integrative. In effect, no person’s “normal” or “deviant” behavior can be adequately understood or treated without a comprehensive grasp of his genetic proclivities and physiopathologic functions, his unique formative experiences, his past and recent stresses, and his various coping capacities as related to his current economic, environmental, cultural and other contingencies. Indeed, in the inherent wisdom of our language the philologic roots of our basic psychiatric terms “health”,“personality”, “disorder”and “therapy”embody their interrelatedness. To illustrate:

Keywords

Personality Disorder Psychiatric Diagnosis Scientific Status Conversion Disorder Coping Capacity 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 1984

Authors and Affiliations

  • Jules H. Masserman
    • 1
  1. 1.Northwestern UniversityChicagoUSA

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