Psychopathology as the basic science of psychiatry

Giovanni Stanghellini, Matthew R. Broome, The British Journal of Psychiatry Sep 2014, 205 (3) 169-170

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AS THE BASIC SCIENCE OF PSYCHIATRY

We argue that psychopathology, as the discipline that assesses and makes sense of abnormal human subjectivity, should be at the heart of psychiatry. It should be a basic educational prerequisite in the curriculum for mental health professionals and a key element of the shared intellectual identity of clinicians and researchers in this field.

Psychopathology1is the discipline that provides psychiatrists with basic knowledge about the abnormal phenomena that affect the human mind and with a valid, reliable method to appraise them. In contemporary usage, the term ‘psychopathology’ is employed in a number of different ways. A common way to use it is to conflate psychopathology with symptomatology - the study of isolated symptoms in view of their diagnostic and aetiological significance. Assessing symptoms allows the identification of specific diagnostic entities that, in turn, enable prediction of natural history and response to treatment. Psychopathology is about that, but not just about that. Whereas symptomatology is strictly illness oriented, psychopathology is also person oriented, since it attempts to describe the patient’s experience and her relationship to herself and to the world..