ABSTRACT
Clinical psychodiagnostics has its origin in medical practice, and emerged historically out of psychiatry. The implications are thus that clinical psychodiagnostics not only developed out of a particular type of knowledge, but also that it possesses a very specific relationship with the object of this knowledge, namely, the patient. This chapter explores the chief difference between the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) diagnostics and their antecedents comes down to the fact that the DSM diagnostics have greater international currency than any preceding nosological system, and this is unquestionably a significant gain. The success of the DSM can be historically understood as emerging from the anti-psychiatry movement, more specifically from dissatisfaction with confusing psychodiagnostic terminology and the accompanying multiplicity of disparate theories and opinions. From the beginning, the aim of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA's) so-called task force was to construct a diagnostic system grounded in sound observation.
