What would Adolf Meyer have thought of the neo-Kraepelinian approach?

Abstract

Because of the problem of diagnostic unreliability in psychiatry, there has been a trend over recent years to create explicit diagnostic criteria, such as the Research Diagnostic Criteria and DSM–III. This movement has been called neo-Kraepelinian (Klerman, 1978) as it promotes many of the ideas associated with the views of Kraepelin, regarded as the founder of modern psychiatry. It favours a biological approach and arose partially as a response to attacks on the ‘medical model’ in psychiatry.