In 1992, Sven Olaf Hoffmann, Wolfgang Schneider and Manfred Cierpka, the three psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, met in a hotel bar to discuss the problem of diagnosis in psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychosomatics and psychotherapy, thinking that “something had to be done” about it.

In the heat of some wine glasses the idea of each of the axes of the OPD arose:

prerequisites for treatment, relationship, conflict, structure and descriptive diagnosis. The three colleagues dedicated themselves to the task of bringing together important people from the academic and psychoanalytic scene to construct the first draft of the manual, which by 1995 was already constructed and tested. Subsequently, 120 clinicians were asked to code videotaped interviews with this draft and, after critical feedback, the OPD-1 Manual1 emerged. (AU)