My arguments in this article are motivated by a particular perspective that I see as an alternative to the DSM approach. The perspective that I uphold over against the DSM's operationism is a brand of scientific realism. In particular, I want to defend as literally true the way of speaking in which we say that scientific research or clinical experience has discovered a particular disorder. Such a discovery would entail learning that the intensions of the diagnostic scheme, in the form of certain fallible indicators, mirror the phenomena actually found to be extensions in psychopathology. The DSM's assumption, by contrast, is that each indicator, in the form of a diagnostic criterion, is infallible, leaving no room for discovery.