Abstract

The advent of DSM-IV has stimulated renewed discussion of psychiatric classification. Such discussion is philosophically sophisticated and farranging, responsive to post-Kuhnian philosophy of science, to feminist critiques of mental health norms, and to multicultural perspectives. As "weak normativists" , today's critics are committed to understanding the interplay between descriptive and evaluative elements, clinical facts and cultural constructs, in psychiatric norms and categories, and are alert to the question of what purposes and whose interests are and should be served by such systems. They offer alternative taxonomic principles as well as analyses and revisions of traditional classificatory concepts and systems.

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