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Teaching Psychiatry: Scientific Myth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Tom Walmsley*
Affiliation:
Southampton University Medical School
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On the whole, when psychiatrists get together in meetings or conferences, they have a fairly good idea of what they are talking about. Discussion flows in a more or less coherent way. Even if the topic involved is problematic—say, the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia—there is a general sense of agreement about what is meant by the words ‘diagnosis' and 'schizophrenia’; even if the meanings are fuzzy at the edges. In areas of psychiatry made complex by the number of variables involved, statistical methods help to clarify the information gleaned, so that in the assessment of, for example, social factors in mental disorder, some clarity of conclusion prevails.

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1984

References

1 Lewis, A. J. (1979) The Later Papers of Sir Aubrey Lewis. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2 Lewis, A. J. (1967) The State of Psychiatry. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
3 Simon, B. (1978) Mind and Madness in Ancient Greece. London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
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