ABSTRACT
Diagnoses are classifi cations of diseases, illnesses or disorders. The word comes from the Greek term for distinction or assessment. Dia literally means through or via, and gnosis is knowledge. So a diagnosis is something through which we may gain knowledge of diseases. A diagnosis should enable us to distinguish between various abnormal conditions. The English term fi rst appeared in 1681, and the project of developing disease classifi cations took off in the 18th century, when different sciences in general became obsessed with categorizing and measuring many different properties of the world (Jutel, 2011, p. 6). According to the historian of medicine Charles Rosenberg, the more recent history of medical diagnoses is closely connected to what he calls disease specifi city. This refers to the modern idea that diseases are specifi c entities that have a kind of independent existence beyond their unique manifestations in sick individuals (Rosenberg, 2007, p. 13). The idea of disease specifi city is so ingrained in medical practices today, and has become quite obvious for patients and professionals alike, that it is diffi cult to imagine that it was once different. But, according to Rosenberg’s studies, this was in fact once different. Disease specifi city is a cultural idea from the end of the 19th century that has enabled people since to imagine diseases as discrete conditions in an organism, which can be defi ned and separated relatively clearly from other diseases, and which are therefore identical with similar conditions in other organisms. Needless to say, this applies to somatic medicine, where examples such as cancer or diabetes can serve as illustrations, but it has also become a commonplace in psychiatry, although the idea is here more debatable, as we shall see in this chapter.
