My abnormal psych professor made a big deal of the fact that the DSM names things first and foremost so they can be talked about. So that when one psychologist says to another "This patient exhibits blahdebleh with specific hemahummahoo", they have reasonable expectations that they are at least talking about the same symptoms. Perhaps they are talking about the same underlying cause, perhaps not, but at least they'll be talking about what appears on the surface to be the same thing, which is better than nothing.
Psychologists are well aware that, for instance, "schizophrenia" (and I'm not going to check whether that's still in the DSM V, if not the point here holds) is probably more than one thing, and as soon as they work out the details, they will be given multiple names. In the meantime, so that everyone is on the same page, it has a description as clear as possible (which is not always very clear).
The DSM is intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive, and not exhaustive. It is also not intended to be casually perused by people who don't understand the purpose, because of the high probability of suffering Medical Student's Disease [1] as a result.
Kind of like how "a headache" is a grossly simplistic term, given how many varieties and underlying causes we know of today, but we still need that anchor point long before discussing the prescription of aspirin vs. tumor surgery.
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My abnormal psych professor made a big deal of the fact that the DSM names things first and foremost so they can be talked about. So that when one psychologist says to another "This patient exhibits blahdebleh with specific hemahummahoo", they have reasonable expectations that they are at least talking about the same symptoms. Perhaps they are talking about the same underlying cause, perhaps not, but at least they'll be talking about what appears on the surface to be the same thing, which is better than nothing.
Psychologists are well aware that, for instance, "schizophrenia" (and I'm not going to check whether that's still in the DSM V, if not the point here holds) is probably more than one thing, and as soon as they work out the details, they will be given multiple names. In the meantime, so that everyone is on the same page, it has a description as clear as possible (which is not always very clear).
The DSM is intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive, and not exhaustive. It is also not intended to be casually perused by people who don't understand the purpose, because of the high probability of suffering Medical Student's Disease [1] as a result.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_students%27_disease
Kind of like how "a headache" is a grossly simplistic term, given how many varieties and underlying causes we know of today, but we still need that anchor point long before discussing the prescription of aspirin vs. tumor surgery.