Diagnostic Specificity

Sociology’s recent maturation as a responsible basic science of human behavior has already begun to contribute to the enrichment of psychiatric knowledge and practice. Studies in the areas of epidemiology and of treatment⁵,¹¹in which clinical observations are related to social structure have cast a new light on our clinical efforts. Particularly valuable in what promises to be continued, if slow, progress toward a general theory of human behavior has been Parson’s structural-functional theory of social systems.¹⁹This presently most comprehensive theoretical approach to the regularities of human group behavior has elaborated, among other valuable notions, the concept of social role in behavioral motivation. According to Leighton, Clausen, and Wilson, in their significant collection of essays, “Explorations in Social Psychiatry,”¹⁶“role is a critical point of interlock between individual dynamism and social pattern, and is, therefore, a very sensitive indicator