This article consists of a historical and conceptual analysis of descriptive psychopathology. The first section defines this field as a cognitive system consisting of terms, suppositions and rules for application. The section conceptual implications of this definition are outlined and related to clinical practice. The second section consists of an updated evaluation of the historical work carried out in descriptive psychopathology and presents a new hypothesis to explain how it developed during the 19th century. The author suggests that the testing of hypotheses should be conducted by psychiatrists with training in history, and seen as a separate specialty. We conclude that investigation into the history of the psychiatric symptoms of patients should be considered an essential stage in the construction of a feasible descriptive psychopathology.
Psychopathology; psychological models; psychiatry; language