Elisabetta Sirgiovanni

 

A Kuhnian reformulation of the recent debate in psychiatric nosography suggested that the current psychiatric classification system (the DSM) is in crisis and that a sort of paradigm shift is awaited (Aragona, 2009).
Among possible revolutionary alternatives, the proposed fi ve-axes etiopathogenetic taxonomy (Charney et al., 2002) emphasizes the primacy of the genotype over the phenomenological level as the relevant basis for psychiatric nosography. Such a position is along the lines of the micro-reductionist perspective of E. Kandel (1998, 1999), which sees mental disorders reducible to explanations at a fundamental epistemic level of genes and neurotransmitters.
This form of micro-reductionism has been criticized as a form of genetic-molecular fundamentalism (e.g. Murphy, 2006) and a multi-level approach, in the form of the burgeoning Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, was proposed.
This article focuses on multi-level mechanistic explanations, coming from Cognitive Science, as a possible alternative etiopathogenetic basis for psychiatric classification. The idea of a mechanistic approach to psychiatric taxonomy is here defended on the basis of a better conception of levels and causality. Nevertheless some critical remarks of Mechanism as a psychiatric general view are also offered.

 

Keywords:
Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, Cognitive Science, psychiatric classification, mechanism, mental dysfunction, multi-level, taxonomy

 

 

Submitted article – open editorial review
Received on December 01, 2009
Accepted on December 12, 2009
Firstly published online on December 27, 2009