Archive for Thomas Szasz
Thomas Szasz is professor of psychiatry emeritus at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. His latest book, Suicide Prohibition: The Shame of Medicine, will be published in October by Syracuse University Press.
Psychiatry 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 [...]
1Jul2008 | Thomas Szasz | 2 comments | ContinuedAnti-Coercion Is Not Anti-Psychiatry
The term “anti-psychiatry” was created in 1967 by the South African psychiatrist David Cooper (1931–1986) and the Scottish psychiatrist Ronald David Laing (1927–1989). Instead of defining the term, they identified it as follows: “We have had many pipe-dreams about the ideal psychiatric, or rather anti-psychiatric, community.” The “we” were Cooper, Laing, Joseph Berke, and Leon [...]
1May2008 | Thomas Szasz | 3 comments | ContinuedTreatments 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 | 1 comment | 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 [...]
1Dec2007 | Thomas Szasz | 0 comments | ContinuedCapital 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 [...]
1Nov2007 | Thomas Szasz | 0 comments | ContinuedMedicalizing 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 [...]
1Jul2007 | Thomas Szasz | 1 comment | ContinuedTherapeutic 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 [...]
1May2007 | Thomas Szasz | 0 comments | ContinuedOn 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 [...]
1Dec2006 | Thomas Szasz | 1 comment | ContinuedThe 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 [...]
1Oct2006 | Thomas Szasz | 0 comments | ContinuedMental 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 | ContinuedMental Illness as Brain Disease: A Brief History Lesson
A 1999 White House Conference on Mental Health concluded: “Research in the last decade proves that mental illnesses are diagnosable disorders of the brain.” President William Clinton was more specific: “Mental illness can be accurately diagnosed, successfully treated, just as physical illness.” Persons who reject the view that mental illnesses are physical diseases are dismissed [...]
1May2006 | Thomas Szasz | 1 comment | ContinuedPsychiatry: Disease Inflation
In his classic, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1920), John Maynard Keynes observed: “Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it [...]
1Mar2006 | Thomas Szasz | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Mad-Genius Controversy
Our ideas about genius, madness, and the existence of a close relationship between them are modern inventions. For millennia people explained the world about themespecially creative/
good and destructive/bad behaviorsin spiritual or god terms.
Taxing for Therapy
The Marxian credo, “From each according to his
abilities, to each according to his needs,” is the
moral foundation of the progressive tax policies
of modern capitalist societies. The psychiatric credo,
“From each producer according to his income, to each
psychiatric parasite according to his cunning,” amplifies
that creed and garbs it in the mantle of therapy.
Idiots, Infants and the Insane: Mental Illness and Legal Incompetence
In principle, mental patents are considered competent, free to accept or refuse treatment. In practice, they are often treated as if they were incompetent, forced to submit to treatment in their own best interest. This conflation of mental illness and legal incompetence—and the concomitant transformation of the mental patient in the community into the (potential [...]
1Jul2005 | Thomas Szasz | 1 comment | Continued-
The Latest
Contraception: Insuring the Uninsurable
Update below. Controversy rages over the Obama administration’s mandate that all employers – including... Read More
The Snow Plowers’ Petition
The following might have happened in a small college town in upstate New York… In a cold and snowy... Read More
Super Bowl versus Education?
In the spirit of Super Bowl weekend I’d like to deconstruct a Facebook status update that a friend... Read More
Capitalism, Corporatism, and the Freed Market
When a front-running presidential contender tells the country that thanks to Barack Obama, “[w]e are... Read More
Creating Jobs versus Creating Value
Picking on New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is one of the largest participation sports on the Internet.... Read More
