Classifying Psychopathology Mental Kinds and Natural Kinds

by Kincaid, Harold; Sullivan, Jacqueline A.

• ISBN13: 9780262549592
• ISBN10: 026254959X
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780262322447
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2023-10-31
• Publisher: The MIT Press
• More Book Details

Summary

Scholars question the extent to which current psychiatric classification systems are inadequate for diagnosis, treatment, and research of mental disorders and offer suggestions for improvement.

In this volume, leading philosophers of psychiatry examine psychiatric classification systems, including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), asking whether current systems are sufficient for effective diagnosis, treatment, and research. Doing so, they take up the question of whether mental disorders are natural kinds, grounded in something in the outside world. Psychiatric categories based on natural kinds should group phenomena in such a way that they are subject to the same type of causal explanations and respond similarly to the same type of causal interventions. When these categories do not evince such groupings, there is reason to revise existing classifications.

The contributors all question current psychiatric classifications systems and the assumptions on which they are based. They differ, however, as to why and to what extent the categories are inadequate and how to address the problem. Topics discussed include taxometric methods for identifying natural kinds, the error and bias inherent in DSM categories, and the complexities involved in classifying such specific mental disorders as “oppositional defiance disorder” and pathological gambling.

Contributors
George Graham, Nick Haslam, Allan Horwitz, Harold Kincaid, Dominic Murphy, Jeffrey Poland, Nancy Nyquist Potter, Don Ross, Dan Stein, Jacqueline Sullivan, Serife Tekin, Peter Zachar

Author Biography

Harold Kincaid is Professor in the School of Economics and Director of the Research Unit in Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics at the University of Cape Town. He is the coeditor of Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context and What Is Addiction? (both published by the MIT Press).

Jacqueline A. Sullivan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Western University, London, Ontario, and a member of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. She is the author of multiple recent journal articles on topics in philosophy of neuroscience.

Table of Contents

Preface ix
1 Classifying Psychopathology: Mental Kinds and Natural Kinds 1
Harold Kincaid and Jacqueline Sullivan
2 Natural Kinds in Psychiatry: Conceptually Implausible, Empirically Questionable, and Stigmatizing 11
Nick Haslam
3 Deeply Rooted Sources of Error and Bias in Psychiatric Classification 29
Jeffrey Poland
4 Psychopharmacology and Natural Kinds: A Conceptual Framework 65
Dan J. Stein
5 Beyond Natural Kinds: Toward a “ Relevant ” “ Scientific ”Taxonomy in Psychiatry 75
Peter Zachar
6 Natural Kinds in Folk Psychology and in Psychiatry 105
Dominic Murphy
7 Being a Mental Disorder 123
George Graham
8 Defensible Natural Kinds in the Study of Psychopathology 145
Harold Kincaid
9 Oppositional Defiant Disorder: Cultural Factors That Influence Interpretations of Defiant Behavior and Their Social and Scientific
Consequences 175
Nancy Nyquist Potter
10 Syndrome Stabilization in Psychiatry: Pathological Gambling as a Case Study 195
Don Ross
11 The Social Functions of Natural Kinds: The Case of Major Depression 209
Allan Horwitz
12 The Missing Self in Hacking’s Looping Effects 227
Şerife Tekin
13 Stabilizing Mental Disorders: Prospects and Problems 257
Jacqueline Sullivan
List of Contributors 283
Index 285