1974

Melvin Sabshin becomes medical director of American Psychiatric Association; the Task Force on Nomenclature and Statistics reconstituted with Spitzer as chairman and including Andreasen and Woodruff (from St. Louis), Donald Klein (Columbia), and Saslow. They outline the approach and structure of DSM III: “. . . there were no major divergent viewpoints, and the primary psychodynamic perspective in psychiatry had no representative at the table . . . Klerman has identified them as neo-Kraepelinians” (Kirk & Kutchins, 98). “For the new classification system, etiology took a back seat to rigorous description; thus, the distinction between endogenous and exogenous depression did not matter if a patient met the criteria. As with the medication trials, patients with alcoholism or drug dependence were not included” (Hirshbein, 212).