All Posts Tagged With: "psychiatry"
The Shame of Medicine: Conviction by Psychiatry
In the predawn hours of June 5, 2002, Brian David Mitchell entered the bedroom of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart and her nine-year-old sister Mary Katherine and left the house with Elizabeth. They walked to a camp site four miles behind her wealthy parents’ spacious Salt Lake City home where they joined Wanda Barzee, Mitchell’s wife. Nine [...]
18Nov2009 | Thomas Szasz | 1 comment | ContinuedThe 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 | ContinuedBook Reviews – October 2008
Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism
by Jörg Guido Hülsmann
Ludwig von Mises Institute • 2007 • 1143 pages • $50.00
Reviewed by Bettina Bien Greaves
Biographer Guido Hülsmann has written a magnificent book, describing in detail not only the life of Ludwig von Mises, but also his writings, his intellectual development, and his importance. Hülsmann studied all Mises’s [...]
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 against [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Psychiatry: 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 [...]
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 | 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 | 0 comments | ContinuedPrimum Nocere
Although the phrase “First, Do No Harm” is not in the Hippocratic Oath, in the opinion of many scholars Hippocrates did originate it. In his book, Epidemics, he wrote: “As to diseases, make a habit of two things—to help, or at least to do no harm.” This principle, usually expressed in its Latin translation, Primum [...]
1Dec2004 | Thomas Szasz | 0 comments | Continued-
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The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy–If We Let it Happen
By Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Peter J. Tanous
