Am J Psychiatry 1981; 138:1198-1202
Copyright © 1981 by American Psychiatric Association
Descriptive and dynamic psychiatry: a perspective on DSM-III
A Frances and AM Cooper
The APA Task Force on Nomenclature and Statistics attempted to make DSM-
III a descriptive nosology that is atheoretical in regard to etiology. The
authors believe that a sharp polarity between morphological classification
and explanatory formulation is artificial and misleading, and they
critically review DSM-III from a psychodynamic perspective. They compare
and contrast the descriptive orientation in psychiatry with the
psychodynamic orientation and conclude that the two approaches overlap,
that they are complementary and necessary to each other, and that there is
a descriptive data base underlying dynamic psychiatry which may be usefully
included in future nomenclatures.
