The DSM as a Moving Laboratory: The Role of the Diagnostic Manual in the Stabilizing and Objectivization of Pharmaceutical Reason

The aim of this article is to trace the paradigm shift that occurred in psychiatry in the 1970s. This change had a key impact on the social perception of health and illness. The theoretical framework of the text is actor-network theory (ANT) and science and technology studies (STS), which deal with the influence of technoscience on society. Using the model of laboratory practice produced within their framework, I attempt to show how the creation of a new diagnostic manual resembled constructing an innovation in a special environment for the purpose of achieving replicable results and controlling the invention’s operation outside the context of creation. In the second part of the text I will deal with the new medical rationale, defining the concept of ‘pharmaceutical reason’ and linking its model of human health with the process of biomedicalization. At the end I cite research referring to the use of the diagnostic manual in medical practice.