Epistemology of mental symptoms

Abstract

Background and methods: Psychiatric diagnosis is dependent on the identification of mental symptoms. On the assumption that they are 'natural kinds', the latter are routinely entered as correlational variables in empirical research. Published work on the philosophy of psychiatry has tended to concentrate on the concept of mental disorder or on individual symptoms but has given less attention to mental symptoms as a class. This paper deals specifically with the epistemology of mental symptoms, that is, with focusing on the nature of mental symptoms as a class of 'objects' and how the clinician gets to know them. In order to do this, mental symptoms can be explored from various perspectives, namely: (i) as types of objects, (ii) as structures, (iii) as definitions, (iv) as pockets of meanings, (v) as comprising constituents, (vi) as attractors in specific dialogical contexts, etc. In this paper, on account of space constraints, we deal only with the former 4 perspectives.

Results and conclusion: Our analysis shows mental symptoms to be unstable constructs with implications for both correlational research and further theoretical exploration.