Stein’s central philosophical contribution was his classic-critical-integrative framework, which he applied to questions in psychopharmacology, psychopathology, and neuroscience. In his telling, the classic position holds that mental disorders are natural kinds, with an objective, biological essence, and they are real, discoverable entities governed by scientific laws. The critical position argues that mental disorders are socially constructed human kinds, that psychiatric nosology is value-laden through and through, and that understanding mental illness requires hermeneutic (interpretive) approaches rather than scientific ones. The “integrative position” was Stein’s preferred approach, which attempted to transcend this binary. (View Highlight)
As he described himself, he was “a fox, not a hedgehog,” someone who knew many things rather than one big thing, and he did this really well. (View Highlight)