Robert M. Young Online Writings
The Writings of Professor Robert M. Young
'Descriptive v Dynamic Concepts of Psychopathology' 95K
This essay complements the one on 'The Concept of Psychopathology: A Critique'. I address the categories of analysis and descriptiive approach of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and contrast them with psychodynamic ways of thinking about the same phenomena. I am not attacking psychiatric nosology but am pointing out the price paid for using it instead of more dynamic concepts. I also address the model of traditional psychiatry as compared with the Kleinian one in which primitive (essentially psychotic) processes are normal components of everyday unconscious phantasies.