International Psychiatric Classification: ICD-10 and DSM-IV

Abstract

Classification is a systematic arrangement of the world as a result of a human ability to create systems in a multitude of otherwise chaotic entities in order to comprehend and master the surrounding world, an ability that probably corresponds to the structure of the human neural network. In psychiatry, classification is as old as history itself, from the Hippocratic school onwards. In the course of the last century, psychiatric classification has become increasingly refined but also subdivided among various schools and traditions, ending up with a number of different major national classifications, such as the French, German, Russian and Anglo-Saxon classifications and, outside Europe, the American, Chinese, Indonesian and Japanese ones. Moreover, within psychiatry, separate groups used to produce their own classification, e.g., for childhood mental disorders.

… ein Diagnosenschema… hat daher nur einen stets vorläufigen Ordnungswert. Sie [eine solche Einteilung] ist eine Fiktion, die ihre Aufgabe erfüllt, wenn sie die zur Zeit relativ richtigste ist. Jaspers (1973)