Abstract

This text focuses on presumed relationships that there might be between the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (and in particular the latest 5th edition) on the one hand, and pharmacological developments since the 1950s on the other. The text will thus not rest on neuroscientific research, methods and discoveries in general since the 1950s, but only on the so-called parallel histories of psychodiagnostic developments on one side and psychopharmacology on the other in the last decades. The criticisms that will be raised here against the DSM's claims to scientificity therefore do not regard neurological research in general, including those aspects that could lead (or already lead) to innovative therapies that have nothing to do with the psychopharmacology in use today in mostly Western countries.