Vol. 5 No. 2 (2025)
Constructing a Perspective: Epistemology of the Psi Sciences

Articles

Mad Travelers: Ian Hacking’s Concept of Transient Disorders

Published 2025-12-31

  • Irina Rybakova
    • ,
  • Mariia Romanyuk

Abstract

This article reconstructs Ian Hacking’s concept of transient mental disorders and proposes it as a methodological tool for analyzing the ontological status of psychiatric categories. The authors argue that Hacking’s model reframes the realism/social constructivism debate in psychiatry in terms of historical ontology: a diagnosis becomes real not only through the identification of symptoms, but through the stabilization of a configuration comprising (a) observational practices, (b) procedures of clinical validation, (c) institutional rules, and (d) culturally available scripts of self-understanding. Central to this account are dynamic nominalism and the looping effect, which describe how classificatory practices shape people’s conduct and reflexive self-understandings and how these responses, in turn, generate pressures to revise the classifications themselves. The conclusion outlines the epistemological implications of Hacking’s approach for critiques of psychiatric taxonomy and specifies the limits of its applicability.

Keywords

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PDF (Russian)

Author Biography

Irina Rybakova

Psychologist, independent researcher.

Mariia Romanyuk

PhD student, Department of Philosophy and Methodology of Science, Faculty of Philosophy, Lomonosov Moscow State University; 1 Leninskie Gory, Moscow, 119991, Russian Federation.

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