Psychological perspectives for the development of future diagnostic systems

Psychological aspects of classification broadly refer to mental functions and dysfunctions and are important to consider both in terms of clinical use and the elucidation of pertinent theories. There are a number of concepts crucial to consider for psychologically informed classification, including personality structure, temperament, psychodynamic psychiatry, functional psychopathology, basic symptoms, anthropological phenomenology and health psychology. In future diagnostic systems, one must critically consider objective measurement and subjective experience, as well as categorical and dimensional measurement. It would also be important to articulate the clinical mental phenomenon, its interpretation and experimental findings as well as to consider the influence of a classification system on the public image of a disorder and a person.