Abstract

Richard sykes’s paper on medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) and its criticism of the inference that they must therefore be psychogenic makes a valuable contribution to the debate around issues of terminology in diagnosis and medical explanation. I would like to broaden the debate by suggesting that looking more explicitly at the context in which terms are used can enhance both clarity and honesty, which is Sykes’s main objective. In doing this, however, I want to defend the use of the term “functional” in some contexts, and also to challenge the inference that physical and mental are antonyms. The loss of the term “functional” in a diagnostic context would, I believe, be a mistake. There is not time ..