liquidity

is, in discussions of mental health, standardized diagnostic categories which allow for the smooth workings of global drug markets and participation in global psychiatric research.

Andrew Lakoff, a medical anthropologist who conducted research in Argentina, has written about the complex negotiations that had to be undertaken to convince the Argentine psychiatric milieu to adopt the diagnostic categories of the third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III). Argentinian psychiatry remained under the sway of Lacanian philosophy and was deeply mistrustful of standardized approaches necessitated by the adoption of the DSM-III. Without the diagnostic equivalence afforded by these standardized categories what Lakoff calls 'liquidity,' drawing on a metaphor from economics not only would it be difficult to market drugs specifically indicated to treat disorders as defined by the DSM, but it would also be difficult to participate in global psychiatric research (p173) . .. In Lock, Margaret and Nguyen, Vinh-Kim (2010). An Anthropology of Biomedicine

is when you look at your investments and wet your pants.

liquidity, n.All

liquidity