This article discusses some of the difficulties encountered by mental health professionals who deal with the diagnosis and taxonomy of mental disorders. Questions related to classification systems, are also discussed comparing the taxonomy of mental diseases with that proposed by another scientific field. Psychoanalysis has made the symptom more than a pure psychopathological sign. This fact, as well as the lack of a solid conceptual framework for classificatory systems, such as the DSM-IV, has created serious difficulties in the attempts to organize the psychopathologies into a comprehensive system.
Psychopathology; DSM-IV; psychoanalysis; taxonomy