Thomas A. Ban: Psychopharmacology and the Classification of Functional Psychoses

 Ban’s reply to Hector Warnes’ comment

This unpublished monograph was written in 1985, one year after the publication of the DCR Budapest Diagnostic Criteria for Research in the Recognition and Identification of Functional Psychoses, authored by Petho, Ban, Kelemen, Ungvari, Karczag, Bitter and Tolna  (1984). The proposed diagnostic criteria are based on the Wernicke-Kleist Leonhard tradition with consideration to contributions from Clerambault, Jaspers, Kahlbaum, Magnan, Stromgren and Wimmer. The primary objective of the monograph was to provide background information on the diagnostic concepts adopted in the DCR for those who might be interested in using it. The text was centered on the proposition that one might be able to select pharmacologically more homogeneous populations for research by using the adopted diagnoses (integrated into a classification) than with diagnoses based on Kraepelin’s tradition or consensus-based diagnoses.  Professor Warnes does not address this proposition. Instead, he reflects on classifications in general with reference to Linnaeus and Mendeleev and digresses on psychiatric history with reference to moral treatment and Freud. Furthermore, when providing information covered in the monograph, he misrepresents the author by out of context quotes, overstatements and by attributing some of his own concerns as if they would be the author’s concerns. Yet all of these are peccadilloes to the gaffe in the middle of the text, where he presents critical comments by some Canadian psychiatrists about the DSM-III, as if they were critical comments about the classification presented in this monograph.

Reference

Petho B,, Ban TA, Kelemen A,, Ungvari G, Karczag I, Bitter I, Tolna J, KDK Budapest. Kutatasi Diagnostikai Kriteriumok  Functionalis Psychosisok Korismezesehez. Ideggyogyaszati Szemle.1984; 37:102-31. 

Thomas A. Ban

October 8 2015