"A welcome introduction to topics at the interface of philosophy and psychiatry, including provocative arguments for a causal classification of psychiatric disorders."
-- Kenneth F. Schaffner, University Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh

In Psychiatry in the Scientific Image, Dominic Murphy looks at psychiatry from the viewpoint of analytic philosophy of science, considering three issues: how we should conceive of, classify, and explain mental illness. If someone is said to have a mental illness, what about it is mental? What makes it an illness? How might we explain and classify it? A system of psychiatric classification settles these questions by distinguishing the mental illnesses and showing how they stand in relation to one another. This book explores the philosophical issues raised by the project of explaining and classifying mental illness.