Abstract

Marion Godman makes the argument that Pathological Withdrawal Syndrome (PWS) makes the case for psychiatric disorders as a natural kind. Godman argues that we can classify kinds according to their shared ‘grounding’, but we need not know what the grounding is to know that the natural is a natural kind. However, I argue that Godman erroneously classifies PWS as its own natural kind when it is in fact a variant of depression, which is its own natural kind. Cooper highlights culture-bound syndromes, which can explain the discrepancy between the different diagnosis rates for psychiatric disorders among different cultures. Taking culture-bound syndromes into account, I conclude that PWS is a type of depression that is culture-specific.