As part of the activities of the WPA Regional Meeting in St. Petersburg (June 10-12, 2010), the WPA Section on Philosophy and Humanities in Psychiatry and the WPA Section on History of Psychiatry carried out the joint symposium ‘Epistemology and Methodology in Psychiatry’. Chaired by Profs. Drozdstoy St. Stoyanov and German Berrios, the symposium included contributions from Lilia Gurova (Bulgaria), Roger Smith (UK), Massimiliano Aragona (Italy), Drozdstoy St. Stoyanov and associates (Bulgaria/USA), Ivana Markova (UK), Georgi Popov (Bulgaria), and from Sergey Ovsyannikov with Peter Morozov (Russia). Aiming at a comprehensive understanding of relevant issues pertaining to the epistemology of psychiatry, the papers presented in the symposium provided a wide coverage of topics - ranging from the role of reflexivity in mental and behavioral phenomena, and from the influence of causal context on the recognition of psychiatric symptoms (requiring for a more methodical research on the epistemology of symptom recognition processes), to arguments for the reformulation of psychiatric nosology and the proposition of a conceptual model for a more efficient integrative dialogue between psychopathology and neurobiology. A more detailed report on the symposium can be found at http://www.inpponline.org/WPA_Section_report_2010.htm