All Posts Tagged With: "Therapeutic State"
Titles of Ignobility: Suicide as Secession
According to the World Health Organization, the United States stands 39th on the list of countries ranked by suicide rate. Despite this, nowhere else in the world is suicide so passionately medicalized and prohibited as in the United States. Why do people kill themselves? Because they are mentally ill, assert the mental health experts, a [...]
21Sep2011 | Thomas Szasz | 43 comments | ContinuedAsk Not For Whom the Drug Tolls
“Fifty years ago, it made sense to assert that mental illnesses are not diseases, but it makes no sense to say so today. Debate about what counts as mental illness has been replaced by legislation about the medicalization and demedicalization of behavior. Old diseases such as homosexuality and hysteria disappear. New diseases such as gambling [...]
22Dec2010 | Wendy McElroy | 13 comments | ContinuedThe Illegitimacy of the “Psychiatric Bible”
“Mental health experts ask: Will anyone be normal?” So read the title of a July 27 Reuters report. The “experts” warned that the fifth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), scheduled for publication in 2013, “could mean that soon no-one will be classed as normal. . . . [M]any people [...]
24Nov2010 | Thomas Szasz | 23 comments | 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 | 8 comments | ContinuedThe Therapeutic State
From the Associated Press: EASTON, Pa. – A man accused of driving drunk said Pennsylvania courts have no jurisdiction over him because he’s his own country. After seeing the paperwork that 44-year-old Scott Allan Witmer filed with the court claiming sovereignty, a Northampton County judge said Tuesday he cannot be released from jail until he [...]
13Mar2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedTrans-Fattened Government
So people dining out in New York City will be protected from unwittingly—or even wittingly—consuming foods containing trans fats. Trans fats are what you get with partially hydrogenated oils and shortenings, which keep foods like French fries from getting soggy and margarine solid at room temperature. Trans fats will be banned in the city’s restaurants [...]
1Jan2007 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedBenjamin Rush and "Medical Marijuana"
Last November the U.S. Supreme Court considered the appeal in Ashcroft v. Raich, regarding approval for so-called medical marijuana, that is, for marijuana by prescription. Hearing the case, Justice Stephen Breyer stated: “Medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum.” This is a Hobson’s choice: in either case, the individual is denied free access [...]
1Mar2005 | Thomas Szasz | 1 comment | ContinuedOn Autogenic Diseases
Our bodies are physico-chemical machines. When the function of the machine deviates from what is generally considered normal and if we regard the deviation as harmful and unwanted, we call the event or process a “disease.” Like all physical-chemical events, diseases have causes, which physicians call “etiology.” The familiar causes of disease are pathogenic microbes, [...]
1May2004 | Thomas Szasz | 2 comments | ContinuedPharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America
This review was commissioned over a year ago. I was looking forward to writing it. But then the depression began. Stress. A new job. A major move. A new marriage. I felt unfocused, obviously not in a condition to write a review of an important new book. Many psychiatrists would have no problem diagnosing my [...]
1Aug2002 | Ross Levatter | 0 comments | ContinuedThe 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 | Thomas Szasz | 1 comment | ContinuedGullible Skeptics
“. . . the reason why liberty, of which we Americans talk so much, is a good thing is that it means leaving people to live out their own lives in their own way, while we do the same. If we believe in liberty, as an American principle, why do we not stand by it?” [...]
1May1999 | Thomas Szasz | 1 comment | Continued-
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