Diagnosis and differential diagnosis in psychiatry and the question of situation referred prognostic diagnosis
Meyendorf, R.
Schweizer Archiv für Neurologie Neurochirurgie und Psychiatrie 126(1): 121-134
1980
ISSN/ISBN: 0036-7273 PMID: 7414302 Document Number: 158925
To diagnose--in its true meaning--is a search for etiology. The different sides of psychiatric diagnoses in this century do reflect the various attempts of this search. Examples are: Kraepelin's concept of etiological unity (morbus) of a disease, Bonhoeffer's attempt of separating exogenous from endogenous psychoses, K. Schneider's definition of psychiatric illness in terms of medical disease, Kretschmer's and Rümke's multidimensional diagnoses and Essen-Möller's principle of separating (postponing) etiology from psychopathological syndromes. The situationa prognostic diagnosis plays its main role in everyday diagnosing. It presupposes that one can recognize, distinguish and differentiate between different symptoms and diseases. The decision for a specific treatment reveals which etiology one thinks to be the main one. It presupposes that one has constantly to consider the kind, the severity and the course of psychiatric disease, Nosological thinking is necessary. The term etiology has a twofold meaning in Greek. 1. cause = causa and 2. accusation, guilt = culpa. In diagnosing psychiatric illnesses this double aspect plays an important role, though unconsciously and unwillingly. Though somatogenic (metabolic) as well as psychogenic (reactive) etiologies are etiologies in the sense of causa there is a fundamental difference between them. They have a common causa materialis but a different causa efficiens. In the first instance it is the non-personal side (related to pure matter), in the second instance the personal side which makes the difference. Only a person can be responsible. Where responsibility does play a role, there also accusation and guilt play a role.