Uses and Abuses of Concepts in Psychiatry

Although the vocabulary of psychiatry does not exceed that of many other disciplines in size, it is unusually fluid, changing rapidly from time to time and from place to place. Psychiatrists have thus been accused at times of overindulgence in terms and concepts. This author examines the ways in which some terms and concepts have come into usage, the functions they serve, and the ways in which they have influenced development in the field. He concludes that Adolf Meyer's "critical pragmatism" remains the most useful approach to the problem of conceptualization and classification in psychiatry.