Sunday, July 13, 2014

Hempel's influence on the DSM

Ever on the lookout for philosophers' influence on other disciplines, I was intrigued to find this 2013 publication by Massimiliano Aragona about Carl Hempel's influence on the early editions of the DSM. Hempel gave a paper in 1959 at the Work Conference on Field Studies in the Mental Disorders (which was organized by the American Psychopathological Association). The paper formed the basis of Hempel's paper 'Fundamentals of Taxonomy' in his collection Aspects of Scientific Explanation (1965). According to Aragona, Hempel's 'neopositivist' approach to psychiatry's taxonomy helped to shape the DSM via the influence of the Anglo-Austrian psychiatrist Erwin Stengel (among others).

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