But many people never discover the folly of such a search and continue to believe that, given enough information, they can define and explain a person. Controversy has always existed among psychiatrists and psychologists about the validity of personality diagnosis. Some believe in the merits of the enterprise and devote their careers to ever greater nosological precision. Others, and among them I include myself, marvel that anyone can take diagnosis seriously, that it can ever be considered more than a simple cluster of symptoms and behavioral traits. Nonetheless, we find ourselves under ever-increasing pressure (from hospitals, insurance companies, governmental agencies) to sum up a person with a diagnostic phrase and a numerical category.
Irvin D. Yalom Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy