DSM-IV Guidebook

Let’s face it. You do not write a 501-page book to "explain" another that is already 886 pages long. Thus, the purposes of DSM-IV Guidebook are not only to "capture the overall landscape of DSM-IV," clarify the meaning of the diagnostic criteria, or even facilitate the process of differential diagnosis. Of course the book does all that, but what this reader found more appealing was the personal, almost confessional nature of the authors’ statements about their thinking on psychiatric diagnosis, their glimpse into the inner works of the DSM-IV Task Force, and their somewhat uncomfortable but always disciplined support of the conservative nature of the Manual as a whole.’ ‹