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WILLIAM G. SMITH, MD

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1966;14(5):521-529.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

THE ADVANCE of any science requires a widely shared and explicit definition of the phenomena which it studies. For effective clinical intervention and research psychiatry needs a reliable classification system to facilitate communication among its professionals. At present there is a commonly held impression, backed by a number of studies,^1-8 that the current psychiatric categories do not adequately meet this criterion of reliability. Some have advocated a totally new nosologic system, while others have reacted to this situation by downgrading the importance of diagnostic labels. Even if a new diagnostic system were devised and judged to be adequate, it would take years for it to gain widespread acceptance and use. Such a strategy also implies that the accumulated observations and traditions of clinicians for the past century have little value. While attempts to construct better diagnostic systems are not to be discouraged, an alternate plan might . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
ITHACA, NY

From the Cornell Program in Social Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

Footnotes
Submitted for publication June 28, 1965.

Thomas Bayes (1702-1761) was an English mathematician and minister whose theorem on probability was published posthumously by a friend, Rev. R. Price.

Reprint requests to 707 Cayuga Heights Rd, Ithaca, NY 14850.

A similar technique has been used by Overall and Gorham to test the validity of 13 psychotic syndromes.9 This investigation represents a modified repetition and extension of their method.

The entire research procedure was handled by a threepart computer program, written in Fortran II, and run on an IBM 7040 machine. Copies of the source program are available from me.

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