  DSM diagnoses are usually taken to reflect a conventional concept of disease, despite the talk of underlying malfunction, because of the emphasis on syndromes and the lack of causal hypotheses. In the manner of the minimal medical model, they let us make use of descriptive and statistical reasoning and offer the hope of accurate prediction and effective control. In the opinion of some philosophers, that is all science ever aspires to. I began by citing a textbook declaration that psychiatry uses normal medical methods, and there is certainly nothing within McHugh and Slavney’s discussion of mental illness that makes scientific methods inapplicable.