Last week’s news week has a really good article by Michael Craig Miller M.D. that discusses the meaning and politics of psychiatric diagnosis. Miller says things that I tried to say in my prospectus, but more articulately. He discusses the revisions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and how different cultural logics affected the way that resource was written and used. I particularly like the speculations in his conclusion:
What’s next? Here’s a prediction: DSM-V authors will approach their work with a generous attitude toward human nature, and will create a diagnostic system consistent with today’s scientific knowledge. They will offer it, not as the last word, but as a tool for testing hypotheses about mental suffering. After all, good science is about getting it both right and wrong. And wisdom—with all due respect to the Greeks—is about appreciating how much we do not know.
There are so many great things in that prediction and so many embedded discourses, and I like where it leaves the reader. Throughout the article, Miller discusses various notions of diagnosis: as “recognition,” as “labeling,” and an affront to individuality. His conclusion suggests a “both/and” attitude toward diagnosis that I kind of like: the need for a ”generous attitude toward human nature” while also listening to science, realizing its use and its limitations.
