Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-III

The manual sets out mental disorders as discrete categories, each defined by an explicit list of criteria a clinician checks against the presenting picture rather than by an account of underlying cause. It states a descriptive intent: diagnoses are framed around observable features, and the manual declines to commit to a theory of how a given disorder forms. A five-axis format records clinical syndrome, personality and developmental factors, physical conditions, stressors, and functioning together.

Robert Spitzer chaired the task force that produced it. The 1980 revision removed most uses of the term neurosis, replaced narrative descriptions with operational criteria written to be applied the same way by different clinicians, and reorganised the classification around categories built for agreement between raters. For a psychodynamic reader, the record it produces names conditions without carrying the causal vocabulary the earlier editions assumed. The American Psychiatric Association revised it as DSM-III-R in 1987.