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The goal of this column is to give an autobiographical perspective on what I saw and learned as a trainee about the origins and the people behind the development of criteria-based psychiatric diagnosis. These individuals' own words are used to explain their rationale and goals. I further explain the transition from the Washington University (or Feighner) criteria to the Research Diagnostic Criteria to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition (DSM-III). The column ends with an example of how research inclusion and exclusion criteria added to DSM-III diagnoses can result in positive results by making the populations being studied both more homogenous and discrete from one another.
Sheldon Preskorn (Sat,) studied this question.