Abstract
Classification became an unpopular topic among American mental-health professionals during the mid-twentieth centry. The best summary of the pejorative connotation of classification is contained in Szasz’s (1961) statement, “Classifiers should be classified, not people.”
Something has happened to me—I do not know what. All that was my former self has crumbled and fallen together and a creature has emerged of whom I know nothing. She is a stranger to me—and has an egotism that makes the egotism that I had look like skimmed milk; and she thinks thoughts that are—heresies. Her name is insanity. She is the daughter of madness—and according to the doctor, they each had their genesis in my own brain. I do not know—and I doubt if the doctors are as sure of what they think they know as they would like others to believe—or would like to believe themselves. I know nothing about such things, at least not in the way their knowledge runs.
They have a list of long Greek and Latin words and when they observe such and such symptoms in one of us, they paste the label for our phobia on us—and there is the end of the matter. I cannot see that they accomplished so much in merely being able to remember all those long-handled names for our madness. We, who have learned what madness is by going through it—(and you cannot have closer knowing than that)—are separated from all others by a gulf so wide that it cannot be bridged. And there the matter lays—divided, split, and sudered.
Jefferson, 1948, pp. 14–15
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Kendell, R. E. The role of diagnosis in psychiatry. Oxford, England: Blackwell Scientific Publication, 1975.
Menninger, K. The vital balance. New York: Viking Press, 1963.
Feighner, J. P., Robins, E., Guze, S. B., Woodruff, R. A., Winokur, G., & Munuz, R. Diagnostic criteria for use in psychiatric research. Archives of General Psychiatry, 1972, 62, 57 – 63.
Spitzer, R. L., & Wilson, P. T. Nosology and the official lpsychiatric nomenclature. In A. M. Freedman, H. I. Kaplan, & B. J. Sadock (Eds.), Comprehensive textbook of psychiatry(2nd ed.). Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1975.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1984 Plenum Press, New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Blashfield, R.K. (1984). Kraepelin and His Influence on Modern Classification. In: The Classification of Psychopathology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2665-6_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2665-6_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-9660-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-2665-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive