Psychopathic disorder: a category mistake? |
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Authors: | C A Holmes |
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Institution: | School of Nursing, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia. |
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Abstract: | Although the concept of psychopathy retains its currency in British psychiatry, apparently being meaningful as well as useful to practitioners (1), it is often taken to refer to a purely legal category with social control functions rather than a medical diagnosis with treatment implications. I wish, in this brief article, to suggest that it is essentially, and most usefully, an ethical category which stands outside the diagnostic framework of present-day psychiatry. |
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