Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 24 - Psychiatry without Description

  • from Section 8
  • Edited by Kenneth S. Kendler, Virginia Commonwealth University, Josef Parnas, University of Copenhagen, Peter Zachar, Auburn University, Montgomery
  • Book:
    Levels of Analysis in Psychopathology
    Published online:
    02 April 2020
    Print publication:
    02 April 2020, pp 297-302

  • Summary

    This commentary on Peter Zachar’s chapter on the issue of description is concerned with the nature and role of description in contemporary psychiatry: It is argued that the so-called operational revolution entailed severe epistemological problems leading to a crisis of description, and hence a more general problem of classification and research. Language in psychiatry, unlike in somatic medicine, does not operate with fixed referential terms but is more concerned with meanings. In other words language in psychiatry plays an important constitutive role. Thus, a description derived from the medical model and transposed into psychiatry exerts devastating consequences, briefly illustrated by a few psychopathological examples.