Janusz Rybakowski: 120 years of the Kraepelinian dichotomy of "endogenous psychoses" in historical perspective

Hans-Juergen Möller’s comment on collating document

        Thank you for this stimulating discussion on a very high academic level!

        I followed with  greatest interest all the contributions and all the important  pro and con arguments.

        The  essay written by  Prof. Janusz Rybakowski,  as well as his  further  well-balanced statements,  seem to me altogether an especially good  summary of our current state of the art in this field. It is also a wise  condensation of the different other  statements, bringing them  into  a global overall picture which seems to be an adequate theoretical  mirror of the meaning of all the empirical  findings.

        In comparison to my review paper from 2008 on this issue, written in a time when there was strong opposition to the Kraepelinian dichotomy by many famous scientists, especially from the genetic field,  apparently the situation has changed and a more pragmatic view  willing to compromise seems to have grown.  I find this adequate in light of the more recent findings which Janusz has reviewed in his  essay so nicely  and the additional data and aspects he presented in his recent comments.

        Of course, many colleagues will find it disappointing that we can not present a final conclusion in the one or other direction, but we have to accept the complexity of this field. It’s the question of whether new methodological approaches can overcome the inherent dilemmas. I expressed this view in two more or less recent (2015a,b) publications shown below.

References:

Möller HJ. Systematic of psychiatric disorders between categorical and dimensional approaches: Kraepelin's dichotomy and beyond.  Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci, 2008;258:48-73.

Möller HJ, Bandelow B, Bauer M, Hampel H, Herpertz SC, Soyka M, Barnikol UB, Lista S, Severus E, Maier W. DSM-5 reviewed from different angles: goal attainment, rationality, use of evidence, consequences--part 1: general aspects and paradigmatic discussion of depressive disorders. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci, 2015a;265(1):5-18. 

Möller HJ, Bandelow B, Bauer M, Hampel H, Herpertz SC, Soyka M, Barnikol UB, Lista S, Severus E, Maier W. DSM-5 reviewed from different angles: Goal attainment, rationality  and consequences - part. 2 bipolar disorders, schizophrenia spectrum disorders, anxiety disorders, obessesive compulsive disorders, personality disorders, substance related  and addictive disorders, neurocognitive disorders. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci, 2015b;265(2):87-106.

October 22, 2020