Psychiatry has long struggled with the nature of its diagnoses. This book brings together established experts in the wide range of disciplines that have an interest in psychiatric nosology. The contributors include philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists, historians and representatives of the efforts of DSM-III, DSM-IV and DSM-V.

• The Basics-The Definition of Psychiatric Illness and Rules for Classification


• 1: Kenneth S. Kendler, and Derek Bolton, and Michael B. First: Classification and causal mechanisms - a deflationary approach to the classification problem


• 2: Kenneth S. Kendler, Peter Zachar, and Rachel Cooper: Progress and the Calibration of Scientific Constructs: The Role of Comparative Validity


• 3: Josef Parnas, S. Nassir Ghaemi, and Derek Bolton: Taking disease seriously: Beyond "pragmatic" nosology


• 4: Kenneth S. Kendler, Rachel Cooper, and S. Nassir Ghaemi: Is psychiatric classification a good thing?


• The Historical Development of Modern Psychiatric Diagnoses


• 5: Josef Parnas, Assen Jablensky, and Darrel A. Regier: The nosological entity in psychiatry: an historical illusion or a moving target?


• 6: Kenneth S. Kendler, German E Berrios, and Josef Parnas: The 19th Century Nosology of Alienism: History and Epistemology


• 7: Kenneth S. Kendler, Michael B. First, and Harold Alan Pincus: The Development of DSM-III From An Historical/Conceptual Perspective


• 8: Kenneth S. Kendler, Harold Alan Pincus, and Mario Maj: Title: DSM IV: Context, Concepts and Controversies


• The Problem of Validity


• 9: Josef Parnas, Kenneth F. Schaffner, and Peter Zachar: A philosophical overview of the problems of validity for psychiatric disorders


• 10: Kenneth S. Kendler, Robert F. Krueger, Nicholas R. Eaton, and Paul R. McHugh: Structural Validity and the Classification of Mental Disorders


• Application to Major Depression and Schizophrenia


• 11: Josef Parnas and Mario Maj: When Does Depression become a Mental Disorder?


• 12: Assen Jablensky, Josef Parnas, and Kenneth S. Kendler: The DSM-IV and the founding prototype of schizophrenia: are we regressing to a pre-Kraepelinian nosology?


• The Way(s) Forward


• 13: Josef Parnas, Paul R. McHugh, and Assen Jablensky: Rendering Mental Disorders Intelligible: Addressing Psychiatry's Urgent Challenge


• 14: Kenneth S. Kendler, Darrel A. Regier, Robert F. Krueger: Diagnostic Threshold Considerations for DSM-5


• 15: Josef Parnas and Kenneth S. Kendler: Epistemic Iteration as an Historical Model for Psychiatric Nosology: Promises and Limitations

The major focus of Kenneth Kendler's research is in the genetics of psychiatric and substance abuse disorders. Two major methodologies are used in this research. The first involves large population based twin samples. In these twins the aggregate role of genetic and environmental factors is addressed. The aim is to understand how these factors interact and correlate, and how, through development, the vulnerability to psychiatric illness and drug abuse is expressed. Samples have been taken from the Virginia Adult Twin Study of Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorders as well as Norway, Sweden and Holland. Kendler's work has focused on a wide range of disorders including major depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, externalizing behaviors, alcoholism, and drug abuse. He has also worked towards understanding the genetic and environmental sources of comorbidity of psychiatric and substance use disorders.
Josef Parnas' main research interests comprise epidemiology and pathogenesis of schizophrenia, including longitudinal prospective studies of children at risk, genetic studies, and psychopathology of schizophrenia, addressed both on a theoretical level and through empirical research. Parnas, also trained as a medical doctor, has always been working at the interface between philosophy and psychiatry with a special emphasis on the psychiatric phenomenology. Over the last two decades he has been pioneering research on anomalies of self-experience in schizophrenia. He is a co-founder of the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen, an interdisciplinary research institute, integrating philosophy of mind, phenomenology, psychopathology and cognitive science.