Criticism
Tyrer (1995): “In the absence of good data, as is common in personality disorders, the [classification] committee is subject to pressures that are more political than scientific.”
• So many categories & PD-NOS: is this really science?
• Aetiological circle of ASPD?
Manning (2000) argues that the conditions of scientific uncertainty around personality disorder means that the production of the DSM-IV Axis II diagnostic category is in fact the basis of an ‘actor-network’ of interests, combining the interests of:
• Legal Professionals
• Psychiatrists
• Academics/Scientists
• The Pharmacological industry
• Governments concerned with managing ‘risk’.
Medicalization of human suffering or distress – as an epistemological perspective
Schneider (2015):
• instead of viewing human behaviour from moral perspective (bad, deviant), we view it from medical perspective (ill, disordered).