In Defence of Psychiatric Diagnoses

Book info: In Defence of Psychiatric Diagnoses (Hardcover, 265 pages) – Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. Language: English.

This open access book makes a distinctive contribution by providing a novel defence of psychiatric diagnoses. It defends psychiatric diagnoses by portraying them as idealised models understood in a neo-Kantian sense. It reject accounts which see psychiatric diagnoses as biomedical entities or as natural kinds.

Drawing upon this neo-Kantian approach to scientific models, the book provides a novel metaphysical account of what psychiatric diagnoses are and novel epistemological guidelines for constructing psychiatric diagnoses. Psychiatric diagnoses are portrayed as models which abstract away from particular aspects of particular people to create generalised models that are applicable to multiple people.

In Defence of Psychiatric Diagnoses is essential reading for all scholars and researchers of the philosophy of science especially those focussing on the philosophy of psychiatry.

Sam Fellowes is an Associate Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Politics and Religion at the University of Lancaster, UK.