ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates why focusing on categories of disorder is often unhelpful, and shows how to be therapeutically useful to different people with different problems. A principles-based approach to counselling and psychotherapy has the advantage of not being constrained by the apparent boundaries imposed by diagnostic categories. Working from a principles-based perspective can take some adjustment for therapists who have been trained to use disorder-specific treatments. The chapter discusses the classification system used for psychiatric disorders. Timimi has provided an ideal critique of the two current classification systems for psychological difficulties: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Appreciating symptoms from a perceptual control theory (PCT) perspective helps explain the otherwise puzzling situation that alleged symptoms of mental health problems are not uniformly and reliably associated with psychological distress.
