Neo-Kraepelinian Divergences from Kraepelin : What are They and Why They Matter

Throughout its development, psychiatry has struggled to legitimate itself as a scientific and medical discipline. Much of this struggle has been attributed to a lack of consensus regarding the nature of mental illness as well as a standard methodology for making diagnoses. In an attempt to eliminate this impediment to psychiatry\u27s scientific advancement, the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) was published in 1980 with significant methodological changes to the nature of classification and approach to clinical diagnoses. Similar to the characterization of modern psychiatry as being amidst a Kraepelinian revival, this highly influential text is often associated with and regarded as an adaptation of the psychiatric nosology of Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926). This paper begins by asking, what lead to this Kraepelinian revival? Secondly and as the primary focus will be an investigation of how Kraepelinian this neo-Kraepelinian manifestation in the DSM III actually was. Addressing the latter will lead to an examination of (1) the technical and contextual differences between Kraepelin\u27s and the DSM\u27s classification of the major psychoses and (2) the ontological differences between and consequences of the respective nosologies. Ultimately, it is argued that the DSM\u27s neo-Kraepelinian translation of Kraepelin\u27s work has deviated from it in consequentially problematic ways