An exploration of what it means to think about psychiatric disorders as real, true, and objective and the implications for classification and diagnosis. In psychiatry, few question the legitimacy of asking whether a given psychiatric disorder is real; similarly, in psychology, scholars debate the reality of such theoretical entities as general intelligence, superegos, and personality traits. And yet in both disciplines, little thought is given to what is meant by the rather abstract philosophical concept of real. Indeed, certain psychiatric disorders have passed from real to imaginary (as in the case of multiple personality disorder) and from imaginary to real (as in the case of post-traumatic stress disorder). In this book, Peter Zachar considers such terms as real and reality -invoked in psychiatry but often obscure and remote from their instances-as abstract philosophical concepts. He then examines the implications of his approach for psychiatric classification and psychopathology. Proposing what he calls a scientifically inspired pragmatism, Zachar considers such topics as the essentialist bias, diagnostic literalism, and the concepts of natural kind and social construct. Turning explicitly to psychiatric topics, he proposes a new model for the domain of psychiatric disorders, the imperfect community model, which avoids both relativism and essentialism. He uses this model to understand such recent controversies as the attempt to eliminate narcissistic personality disorder from the DSM-5. Returning to such concepts as real, true, and objective, Zachar argues that not only should we use these metaphysical concepts to think philosophically about other concepts, we should think philosophically about them.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
MIT Press Ltd
ISBN-13
9780262027045
eBay Product ID (ePID)
182959704
Product Key Features
Subject Area
Clinical Psychology
Author
Peter Zachar
Publication Name
A Metaphysics of Psychopathology
Format
Hardcover
Language
English
Subject
Psychology
Publication Year
2014
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
288 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
229mm
Item Width
152mm
Item Weight
522g
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Peter Zachar
Series Title
Philosophical Psychopathology
Country/Region of Manufacture
United States
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