Archive for Thomas Szasz
Thomas Szasz is professor of psychiatry emeritus at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. His latest book is Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared.
The Shame of Medicine: The Case of General Edwin Walker
In 1962 James Meredith, an African-American student, tried to enroll at the University of Mississippi. His admission was opposed by Ross Barnett, the Democratic governor of the state, former Major General Edwin A. Walker (1909–1993), a decorated hero of World War II and prominent “right-winger,” and a group of segregationist white students. To ensure Meredith’s [...]
23Sep2009 | Thomas Szasz | 3 comments | ContinuedThe Shame of Medicine: The Depravity of Psychiatry
Psychiatrists alternately deny and delight in possessing special professional skill at detecting future “dangerousness” that entitles them to the special power to incarcerate individuals they so stigmatize in prisons that masquerade as hospitals. The American legal system makes heavy use of psychiatric determinations of dangerousness, as a result of which vast numbers of Americans are deprived of liberty and, at the same time, of opportunity to demonstrate the injustice of their detention. Examples abound.
17Jun2009 | Thomas Szasz | 9 comments | ContinuedThe Shame of Medicine: The Case of Alan Turing
The posthumous diagnosis of suicide as mental illness is the ritual degradation ceremony of our therapeutic age, much as the posthumous burning of the heretic’s corpse was the ritual degradation ceremony of an earlier theological age.
24Apr2009 | Thomas Szasz | 15 comments | Continued
The Burden of Responsibility
Life is an unending series of choices and, therefore, “problems in living.” Ordinary choices—what to have for breakfast—we ignore as trivial. Extraordinary choices—whether to kill ourselves (or worse)—we dismiss as the symptoms of mental illness. The profession of psychiatry rests on, and caters to, the ubiquitous human desire to avoid, evade, and deny the very [...]
1Dec2008 | Thomas Szasz | 1 comment | ContinuedMendacity by Metaphor
Once upon a time, law-abiding citizens acknowledged that they wanted lawbreakers punished. They did not say the offenders “needed” punishment. When they used the term “need” metaphorically—as when an outlaw in a bar told his buddies that one of their adversaries “needed” killing—they knew what they were talking about. They did not lie to themselves, [...]
1Oct2008 | Thomas Szasz | 0 comments | ContinuedPsychiatry Versus Liberty
For millennia, slavery—involuntary servitude—was a universally accepted social institution. Today, psychiatric slavery—involuntary “treatment for mental illness”—is such an institution. Psychiatric incarceration and forced psychiatric treatment are integral parts of modern medical practice and social life.
The libertarian philosophy of freedom is based on the premise that self-ownership is a basic right and that initiating violence against [...]
The Therapeutic State ~ Anti-Coercion Is Not Anti-Psychiatry
Thomas Szasz is professor of psychiatry emeritus at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. His latest books are Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry (Transaction) and The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays (Syracuse University Press).
The term “anti-psychiatry” was created in 1967 by the South African psychiatrist David Cooper (1931–1986) and the Scottish [...]
Treatments Without Diseases
In the psychiatrically correct view, mental illnesses are “just like bodily illnesses”; in fact, they are authoritatively declared to be “brain diseases.” The truth is that they are not. In medicine, there are diseases and, sometimes, treatments for them. In psychiatry, there are no diseases; nevertheless there are always treatments; that is, procedures declared to [...]
1Mar2008 | Thomas Szasz | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Medicalization of Everyday Life
In my October column I discussed the concept of medicalization and its role in modern societies. In this column I propose to answer the question: How are we to understand the contemporary confusion about what counts as a disease?
Medical classification—the linguistic-conceptual ordering of phenomena we call “diseases” and of the interventions we call “treatments”—is a [...]
Capital Letters
Were Missionaries Like Psychiatrists?
To the Editor:
People have misunderstood and maligned Christians for two millennia, but goodness, must Dr. Szasz compare us to coercive quacks? He writes in The Freeman’s July/August 2007 issue: “Consider this parallel between psychiatry and missionary Christianity. The heathen savage does not suffer from lack of insight into the divinity of Jesus, [...]
Medicalizing Quackery
The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines “medicalize” as “to view or treat as a medical concern, problem, or disorder” and offers this phrase as illustration: “those who seek to dispose of social problems by medicalizing them.” Accordingly, we speak of the medicalization of homosexuality and hostility, but do not speak of the medicalization of malaria or [...]
1Oct2007 | Thomas Szasz | 0 comments | ContinuedDefining Psychiatry
In the United States today everyone considers himself an expert on psychiatry, especially in the aftermath of a mass murder by a “deranged madman.” Yet academically and legally qualified experts in the field keep telling us that they cannot even define psychiatry.
In 1886 Emil Kraepelin, the undisputed founder of modern psychiatry as a medical specialty [...]
Therapeutic Censorship
Freedom of speech is one of the most distinctly American political values. In many European democracies people take for granted that their freedom requires criminal sanctions against the expression of certain odious ideas, exemplified by the denial of the Holocaust. In the United States, that would be a clear violation of the First Amendment.
To be [...]
On Not Admitting Error
According to a September 2006 report in the New York Times, Afghanistan’s opium harvest has increased almost 50 percent from the year before and reached the highest levels ever recorded. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (sic) explained: “It is indeed very bad, you can say it is [...]
1Mar2007 | Thomas Szasz | 2 comments | ContinuedPsychiatry: A Branch of the Law
Medicine and law are independent but intimately interacting social institutions. Medicine guards its autonomy jealously and relates to the legal system as an equal partner. Psychiatry, in contrast, submits slavishly to being dominated by the law and obediently meets its demands. Herewith are some examples.
On July 3, 2006, Orin Guidry, M.D., president of the American [...]
The Therapeutic State ~ The Therapeutic Temptation
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” enjoins the Lord’s Prayer. Temptation to commit what wrongful act? For the men who wrote that warning and the people to whom it was addressed, there was no doubt about the answer: concupiscence.
Today, the term is obsolete and the bodily-mental state to which it [...]
Mental Illness: Sickness or Status?
Popular belief and scientific dogma notwithstanding, the term “mental illness” refers to unwanted behavior, not medical malady. Specifically, the term refers to the role of “mental patient,” a social status imbued with far-reaching legal and political implications. The law assumes that persons called “mental patients” are more likely to be dangerous to themselves and/or others [...]
1Aug2006 | Thomas Szasz | 0 comments | Continued-
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Book Reviews
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Montessori, Dewey and Capitalism: Educational Theory for a Free Market In Education
By Jerry Kirkpatrick
