DSM-IV and dangerous and severe personality disorder—an essay

In this essay some reflections are offered on the nature of psychiatric classification, on how these diagnostic categories have evolved in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals of Mental Disorders (DSM) system and on the development of services based on them. These are described, and then analysed from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge, using ‘personality disorder’ as an example. Conditions that underlie the stabilisation of such categories, and the policy and political consequences of basing services on them, are reviewed.