[Category and dimension in psychiatry]

The present paper discusses the concepts of category and dimension in the field of Psychiatry. As the need for a taxonomy is widely accepted, a broad review is offered of the present debate in its historical background, revolving around what mostly appears as a dichotomy between category and dimension. The classical descriptions of psychiatric entities, of categorial linneage, have had and still have unquestionable weight in clinical practice and even in the construction of Psychiatry as a medical speciality. Its limitations, especially since the most recent versions of the DSM appeared, have given lieu both to objections and to new proposals, themselves not extent of conflict and limitations of their own. Lastly, the authors suggest that the problem is wrongly posed when presented in terms of an "either/or" disjunctive.