Archive for Thomas Szasz

Thomas Szasz is professor of psychiatry emeritus at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. His latest book is Suicide Prohibition: The Shame of Medicine.

The Maternity Hospital and the Mental Hospital

At first sight, the maternity hospital and the mental hospital are two completely different institutions. However, on closer examination, striking similarities emerge. Neither pregnancy nor delivery is a disease; each is an aspect of the mammalian reproductive mechanism. Women delivered babies long before there were special buildings called “lying-in hospitals” established to care for them. [...]

1May2002 | | 0 comments | Continued

Parity for Mental Illness, Disparity for Mental Patients

By definition, diseases are afflictions of the body. Hence, afflictions of the mind, called “mental illnesses,” are not real diseases. Organized psychiatry deals with that embarrassing fact by reasserting its age-old claim that “mental illnesses” are brain diseases and enlisting the power of the state to turn fiction into fact. In October 2001 the Senate [...]

1Mar2002 | | 1 comment | Continued

Patient or Prisoner?

Today, the names of madhouses no longer contain terms such as “insanity,” “madness, “mental hospital,” or even “hospital.” They are “centers”—named after a locality or person, the latter typically honoring the memory of a former madhouse keeper. Thus do psychiatrists destigmatize mental institutions, legitimize themselves as physicians, and even more easily restigmatize mental patients as dangerous quasi-criminals.

1Jan2002 | | 0 comments | Continued

Mental Illness: Psychiatry’s Phlogiston

“The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.” —Gilbert K. Chesterton In physics the same laws are used to explain why airplanes fly and why they crash. In medicine the same principles are used to explain why people live and [...]

1Nov2001 | | 0 comments | Continued

The Bought Mind

Why did the Founders not mention money, that is, the government’s use of taxes to support religious organizations? The answer is simple and important. First, because religious bodies, exemplified by the Vatican, derived their income directly from their members, collected their own funds, and were often quite wealthy.

1Jul2001 | | 1 comment | Continued

Kevorkian, Lies, and Suicide

Jack Kevorkian became famous allegedly for helping persons commit suicide. His supporters continue to hail him as the person who put physician-assisted suicide on the political map of America. This is a false image created by Kevorkian and the media. Webster’s Dictionary defines suicide as “an act or an instance of taking one’s own life [...]

1May2001 | | 3 comments | Continued

Affirmative Chemical Action

In my last column I showed that caffeine is the most widely used mind-altering drug in America, that its use is endorsed by the government, and that the public-school system, allied with the beverage industry, has become one of America’s major drug delivery systems. In this column I will show that the popular enthusiasm and [...]

1Mar2001 | | 0 comments | Continued

Public Schools as Drug Delivery Systems

Thomas Szasz, M.D., is professor of psychiatry emeritus at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. He is the author of Fatal Freedom. One of the saddest aspects of America’s monstrous war on drugs is the way drug warriors justify their sadism and selfishness with the rhetoric of protecting “kids.” Our public schools not only fail [...]

1Jan2001 | | 0 comments | Continued

Creativity and Criminality: The Two Faces of Responsibility

“No productiveness of the highest kind, no remarkable discovery, no great thought which bears fruit and has results is in the power of anyone . . . . Man must consider them as unexpected gifts from above, as pure children of God . . . . The process savors of the demonic element which irresistibly [...]

1Nov2000 | | 0 comments | Continued

Progress in Pain Relief

“Among the remedies which it has pleased the Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.” —Thomas Sydenham, M.D. (1680) The authors of the textbook of pharmacology used when I was a medical student (during World War II) stated: “The opium alkaloids have no [...]

1Sep2000 | | 0 comments | Continued

Chemical Straitjackets for Children

In February, a group of physicians writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the use of “psychotropic medications prescribed for preschoolers increased dramatically between 1991 and 1995.” About twice as many children between the ages of 2 and 4 were given Ritalin, Prozac, and other so-called psychotropic drugs at the end [...]

1Jul2000 | | 0 comments | Continued

Remembering Masturbatory Insanity

“Every age has its peculiar folly; some scheme, project, or phantasy into which it plunges, spurred on either by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the mere force of imitation.” —Charles Mackay Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds The contemporary mental health movement—epitomized by the dogmatic belief that “mental illness [...]

1May2000 | | 6 comments | Continued

Does Insanity Cause Crime?

“The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.” —Gilbert K. Chesterton For 300 years we have sidestepped confronting the truth about human desperation and depravity, and the horrors the desperate and the depraved can inflict on us and themselves. In [...]

1Mar2000 | | 1 comment | Continued

Remembering Krafft-Ebing

In my previous column (November 1999), I showed that mental illness is not a disease because it does not meet the scientific criterion of disease. In this column I will show that the primary purpose of psychiatry is not medical-therapeutic because its historical mandate and primary purpose is not to remedy a patient’s diseases but [...]

1Jan2000 | | 0 comments | Continued

Is Mental Illness a Disease?

“You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. . . . So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing—that’s what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something [...]

1Nov1999 | | 0 comments | Continued

The Hazards of Truth-Telling

Language is a priceless gift we inherit from people who came before us and bequeath to those who come after us. Language is a human product, but it is not made by any particular person or group. Because the meaning of what is said depends both on the speaker and on the listener, language is [...]

1Sep1999 | | 0 comments | Continued

Suicide as a Moral Issue

“Suicide is an event that is a part of human nature. However much may have been said and done about it in the past, every person must confront it for himself anew, and every age must come to its own terms with it.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) Behind Goethe’s simple statement lies a profound [...]

1Jul1999 | | 11 comments | Continued
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