Some Therapeutic Expectations, Strategies, and Alternatives

Abstract

In psychiatry, we invoke categories to explain and predict behavior and to link behavior and experiences to the brain (McHugh, 2010; Kagan, 2002). What we take to be real properties are, of course, tied to our foraging for coherence. Rather than trying to determine how “real” these categories are, it may be better to ask how useful they are for purposes of predictability and coherence and what their experimental and therapeutic context and potential are.