The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual: A History of Critiques of Psychiatric Classification Systems

Abstract

Critiquing psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) can be viewed as both a thankless and impossible task. In constructing psychiatry’s bible, innumerable professionals have debated and promoted the classification and aetiology of madness, espousing along the way contradictory and complicated systems of nosology and cause — as if they could somehow step outside their necessarily limited perspective on human conduct and take a detached view. Deconstruction is no different; attempting to summarize the myriad influences on why certain schemes (e.g., diagnosis) prosper and others fail is prone to provoke suspicions of hubris.