Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry

<This multidisciplinary collection explores three key concepts underpinning psychiatry-explanation phenomenology and nosology-and their continuing relevance in an age of neuroimaging and genetic analysis.An introduction by Kenneth S. Kendler lays out the philosophical grounding of psychiatric practice. The first section addresses the concept of explanation from the difficulties in describing complex behavior to the categorization of psychological and biological causality. In the second section contributors discuss experience including the complex and vexing issue of how self-agency and free will affect mental health. The third and final section examines the organizational difficulties in psychiatric nosology and the instability of the existing diagnostic system. Each chapter has both an introduction by the editors and a concluding comment by another of the book's contributors.Contributors: John Campbell Ph.D.; Thomas Fuchs M.D. Ph.D.; Shaun Gallagher Ph.D.; Kenneth S. Kendler M.D.; Sandra D. Mitchell Ph.D.; Dominic P. Murphy Ph.D.; Josef Parnas M.D. Dr.Med.Sci.; Louis A. Sass Ph.D.; Kenneth F. Schaffner M.D. Ph.D.; James F. Woodward Ph.D.; Peter Zachar Ph.D.