%0 Journal Article
%T Feeling and smelling psychosis:  American alienism, psychiatry, prodromes and the limits of ¡®category work¡¯
%A Richard Noll
%J History of the Human Sciences
%@ 1461-720X
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0952695117750341
%X Some limitations of ¡®category work¡¯ in the history of psychiatry are illustrated via the example of attempts within US alienism and psychiatry since 1889 to identify psychosis and its prodromes. A slowly evolving acceptance of the need for specifiable biological disease concepts, distinct diagnostic categories and defined boundaries of the ¡®before and after¡¯ of psychosis among some elite physicians challenged widespread vernacular methods of diagnosis expressed as intuition, feelings or scent as well as local practices of creating novel placeholder terms ¡®as needed¡¯ or using question marks to express liminality or confusion. When ¡®error of diagnosis¡¯ emerged as a concern circa 1909, the professional transformation of this ¡®scientific self of subjectivity¡¯ of the psychiatrist into a ¡®scientific self of objectivity¡¯ eventually resulted in the turn to numerical judgments based on rating scales for psychotic symptoms. However, rating scales do not ¡®count¡¯ anything at all and exist as instruments of liminality between subjective clinical opinion and the affection of objectivity that quantification symbolizes
%K dementia praecox
%K praecox feeling
%K psychiatric rating scales
%K psychosis prodromes
%K schizophrenia
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0952695117750341