Outline of the Psychiatric Section of the XVI International Congress in Budapest

The 1st meeting of the psychiatric section was devoted to the development of the question of the classification of mental illnesses; presentations on this topic were made by Ballet and Maillard, Keraval and Bresler. In the reports, the authors expressed their views on the classification and its necessity for the successful development of psychiatry and proposed their own classifications. Maillard, who reported in the absence of Ballet, expressed the following considerations: at present, there are only a few true nosological units, since we encounter more extensive groups of pathological conditions, syndromes, symptomatic complexes; a single principle cannot currently be drawn through a classification; physiological, psychological and pathological anatomical principles are not sufficient in themselves; the clinical principle only defines the syndromes; pathogenesis and pathological anatomy are the two principles upon which modern classification must be based.