Feeling and smelling psychosis: American alienism, psychiatry, prodromes and the limits of "category work'

作者：Noll Richard^*

来源：History of the Human Sciences, 2018, 31(2): 22-41.

DOI：10.1177/0952695117750341

• dementia praecox
• praecox feeling
• psychiatric rating scales
• psychosis prodromes
• schizophrenia

Some limitations of category work' in the history of psychiatry are illustrated via the example of attempts within US alienism and psychiatry since 1889 to identify psychosis and its prodromes. A slowly evolving acceptance of the need for specifiable biological disease concepts, distinct diagnostic categories and defined boundaries of the before and after' of psychosis among some elite physicians challenged widespread vernacular methods of diagnosis expressed as intuition, feelings or scent as well as local practices of creating novel placeholder terms as needed' or using question marks to express liminality or confusion. When error of diagnosis' emerged as a concern circa 1909, the professional transformation of this scientific self of subjectivity' of the psychiatrist into a scientific self of objectivity' eventually resulted in the turn to numerical judgments based on rating scales for psychotic symptoms. However, rating scales do not count' anything at all and exist as instruments of liminality between subjective clinical opinion and the affection of objectivity that quantification symbolizes.

• 出版日期2018-4