Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry

Few books on psychiatry explore with seriousness and clarity the difficult problems of explanation, scientific description, and causality. This one does. The introductions are like having an articulate and patient professor at your shoulder. The material is discussed by first-rate people in their fields, and the commentaries prevent the discussion from becoming static or predictable. I hope this sophisticated book will be read widely and considered carefully. -- John Z. Sadler, M.D., editor of Descriptions and Prescriptions: Values, Mental Disorders, and the DSMs

This multidisciplinary collection explores three key concepts underpinning psychiatry-explanation, phenomenology, and nosology - and their continuing relevance in an age of neuroimaging and genetic analysis. An introduction by Kenneth S Kendler lays out the philosophical grounding of psychiatric practice. The first section addresses the concept of explanation, from the difficulties in describing complex behaviour to the categorization of psychological and biological causality. In the second section, contributors discuss experience, including the complex and vexing issue of how self-agency and free will affect mental health. The third and final section examines the organizational difficulties in psychiatric nosology and the instability of the existing diagnostic system. Each chapter has both an introduction by the editors and a concluding comment by another of the book's contributors. Contributors: John Campbell, PhD; Thomas Fuchs, MD, PhD; Shaun Gallagher, PhD; Kenneth S Kendler, MD; Sandra D Mitchell, PhD; Dominic P Murphy, PhD; Josef Parnas, MD, Dr Med Sci; Louis A Sass, PhD; Kenneth F Schaffner, MD, PhD; James F Woodward, PhD; Peter Zachar, PhD.