This is a great book for laying to rest some orthodox but wrong ideas about our mental health. Szasz shows us that the orthodox way is not necessarily the right way. Certainly our own doctors are not going to blow the whistle on themselves, are they? This revolutionary psychiatrist shows us the real path to health, pointing us away from the wrong direction that the pharmaceutical companies have been leading us, and unfortunately, leading our doctors as well. It's a case of the fox guarding the henhouse.
Do you care that a psychiatrist is a doctor who prescribes drugs to change people's brains without ever actually examining those people's brains? Do you worry that nobody knows exactly what the long-term effect of these drugs are that we are now being given for bi-polar disorder, for attention deficit disorder, for depression or for anxiety; or even if they are really doing us more harm than good? Do you know how doctors today are becoming more and more controlled and subverted by the pharmaceutical industry? Do you think that unwanted behavior and unwanted feelings like anxiety and depression are diseases that can be cured by drugs? If you do, you should read the latest book by this world renowned psychiatrist.
"Psychiatrists have a long history of systematically validating fake diseases as real diseases, and getting away with it," says Szasz. They can get away with it because it serves everybody: the family whose medical insurance will pay only for certain diagnoses and not for others; the government officials who can allocate more and more federal funds for their universities and laboratories; and the doctors who can service many more patients in the "service station" atmosphere that has us all believing that everything can be made right with the right pill. The only person whom fake diagnoses and powerful drugs are not serving is the health of the individual who is having his birthright sold for a pharmaceutical mess of pottage.
We are confusing, warns Szasz, bodily diseases which are physiochemical phenomena located in the body and understood by cellular pathology with unwanted personal habits or behaviors which are located in the social context of society and understood by the interconnecting relationships. We are confusing the mind with the brain. And finally, we are confusing medicine with politics and social agenda. In so doing we are becoming less and less the land of the free and the brave and more and more the land of the mentally ill and deluded. Szasz makes a good case for a new look at the insidious subversion of our medical care by the politics of pharmaceutical managed care.

Pharmacracy

Do you care that a psychiatrist is a doctor who prescribes drugs to change people's brains without ever actually examining those people's brains? Do you worry that nobody knows exactly what the long-term effect of these drugs are that we are now being given for bi-polar disorder, for attention deficit disorder, for depression or for anxiety; or even if they are really doing us more harm than good? Do you know how doctors today are becoming more and more controlled and subverted by the pharmaceutical industry? Are unwanted behavior and unwanted feelings like anxiety and depression diseases that can be cured by drugs? If you think they are, please run as fast as you can and get this book. It could save your life.

This is one of the best books Szasz has written up to date. One of its most important points is his answer to the claim that biologic psychiatry, imaging tecniques and so on have proved that mental illness is an organic illness. It could not be so since in spite of cute pictures of synapses and neurotransmitters in Psichiatry manuals, what psychiatrists really DO is to jugde behaviors, ideas and social situations, attaching their labels not to any physical condition discovered by imaging tecniques but to persons who display or are considered to display those -indeed- "problems in living".

He rigorously delves into the question of what disease, illness or disorder really is. The growing army of "mental health professionals" hate to pose that question. When forced to answer their stataments are ambiguous and elusive.

The questions raised not only by this book but by the whole of Szasz's important work are crucial for contemporary man. Some ideas, behaviors, social situacions are covertly forbidden. Then, there is less room for freedom than it seems to be. To take some substances, kill oneself, engage in certain religious activities -"sects"-, sexual acts, etc. is prohibited by calling those "diseases" and precluding any chance of legitimate debate. Some are not content leaving people alone when they engage in actions that concern only themselves or others who consent in voluntary exchanges, even is it harms them according to OUR views. But the right to make the wrong choice IS freedom, as it is the need of bearing its consequences,on health, reputation or financial status. That is why some patients do not care much for Ssasz' criticisms. As long as psychiatrists wear white robes and are doctors we are not permitted even to discuss those topics, lest this in itself could be a symptom of some illness -from the incredible list in the DSM IV-. But is this science or morality of even religion in disguise?

This book is important, first for the "mental health professionals" who have heard of Szasz work and believe that it is overcome by recent developments. They should ponder upon it, even if they are not able to set up a private practice with voluntary clients like any other professional, for the sake of their conscience. Second, possible patients must be aware that their strategy -taking the role of a mental patient- can be deleterious for their social and even physical well-being. And any person who tries to understand the world in which he or she lives must read Szasz, who is a sage of our day. "Phamacratic" ideology blurrs the contours of real problems which dimension is moral, and not scientific.

Szasz' premise is that each individual is the best judge of his or her interest. Others think that coercion, fraud and lies are good procedures to save people from themselves. I quote from a horror movie of Vicent Price: "Here thousands of men and women were tortured and killed... to save their souls" (in a torture chamber of the Inquisition).

"Pharmacratic" ideology betrays basic Western values, and does it successfully decked out in "scientific" attire. One of Szasz' most important teachings has been to distinguish between science as such an ritual and pseudoreligions claiming to be "science". Bad news for orthodox psychiatry: Szasz is still standing and his arguments have sharpened their subtlety, scope and comprehensiveness.

What a combination: Kraus, the man who first denuded the emperor Freud, and Szasz, the man who methodically stripped psychiatry/psychotherapy of any scientific pretensions. Aside from a lesson in history, a major debunking of psychiatric fraud, and an interesting biography, this book is a lot of fun. Kraus ranks with Twain and Mencken as an aphorist, and Szasz's translations of the original German make the quotes ring clear and powerful.

Freud tried to cozy up to him (and was rejected); his work was fundamental to Wittgenstein's philosophico-linguistic theories, and three times he was nominated for the Nobel prize in literature by French academicians; yet he remains essentially unknown in this country, despite this marvelous exegesis of his work by Thomas Szasz, which was published in 1976.

Karl Kraus (1874-1936) was, and continues to be, an embarrassment to many intellectuals. His punishment has been to have his work misread, misinterpreted, untranslated, and finally ignored. He has been attacked as being antisemitic ("self-hating Jew"), mentally disturbed, and (symbolically) envious of his father's penis.

Kraus's commentaries and aphorisms concerning psychiatry and psychoanalysis are delightful, powerful, and as accurate today as when he uttered them. Szasz, who has been fighting the good battle against psychiatric abuses and pretensions all of his career, is the ideal person to introduce Americans to Kraus and his work. A short, well indexed book. Worth having to keep and to read over from time to time.

The most telling line against Freudianism: "Psycho-analysts are the disease posing as the cure". Kraus had a real nose for blather and imposture, and dissected the Vienna circle around Freud as Mencken did the fundementalists. An exposure to Kraus is a sure and certain innoculation of the psychobabble that passes nowdays as charcter analysis. Take two hours to slowly devour, digest, and delight in this tasty intellectual treat.

I strongly disagree with the Library Journal reviewer that this book is "not much of an addition to the author's previous work". Among his many works, this book is by far the clearest and best documented statement of his basic proposition that mental illness is a myth. Really, this is the book that his second and groundbreaking book "The Myth of Mental Illness" should have been.

I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Szasz in the mid-1990s, and I told him that I thought his best books were "The Manufacture of Madness" and "Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences", in that order. He said that many people agree with me, but that he himself would reverse the order and put "Insanity" first. Who am I to argue?

For his brilliance, importance, and courage, Thomas Szasz is my greatest intellectual hero, followed by Karl Popper for similar reasons.

Thomas Szasz's writing career has been founded on reaching for the truth by smashing the false linguistic and conceptual idols of psychiatry. His "Myth of Mental Illness," published in 1961, still stands as one of the most clear and devastating indictments of modern psychiatry: a system it describes as being rife with hypocrisy and mendacity. There is no such "disease" as mental illness, or schizophrenia, or insanity, he argues (brilliantly).

In this book Szasz brings together and summarizes the logical and conceptual underpinnings of his arguments. It is a tour de force. His language is simple, direct, unequivocal. The influence of Karl Kraus (about whom has written a book) on the purity of his language usage is patent in his prose and thus the reader is never left in doubt about what Szasz means.

Szasz recognizes the difficulty of abandoning any broad and pervasive set of concepts with which we have been raised, regardless of how wrong or absurd the concepts may be. Those who toil in the field of mental health may reject all (or most) of his arguments on the basis of their daily contact with the mentally ill: to be shown that there is no such thing as "mental illness" is bound to cause a jolt to their tranquility. Yet it should be the goal of society to seek a universe in which the behavior of people is not mislabeled and where truth in language reigns. Szasz points us in the right direction. An excellent bibliography, references, and name and subject indices are part of the book.

The Meaning Of Mind: Language, Morality, And Neuroscience by Thomas Szasz (Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, State University of New York Health Science Center, Syracuse) is an articulate, highly accessible, and persuasive treatise that calls into question the trend of analyzing the mind as if it were nothing more than a collection of brain functions. Taking the viewpoint that people should be understood and judged as moral individuals with free will, and not as mindless slaves to the workings of brain chemistry, The Meaning Of Mind is a persuasive, challenging, succinctly written account that can be confidently recommended to students of Human Psychology.

A BOOK REVIEW

by John Friedberg, M.D.

Hippocrates located the mind in the brain; Descartes, the soul in the pineal gland; and in 1994, Nobel Laureate Francis Crick reported "Free Will...in or near the anterior cingulate sulcus." Diseases of the mind, "mental illnesses," are even better localized: obsessive compulsive disorder is spotted in the frontal lobes, homosexuality in the hypothalamus and Schizophrenia is assigned now to Dopamine, now to Serotonin and now to the neurotransmitter molecule "du jour." "What's going on here?" asks the author, rhetorically: "They can't all be right." Thomas Szasz, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at State University of New York in Syracuse, thinks they may all be wrong. In this, his 23rd book, he quotes Hughlings Jackson, the great 19th century British neurologist: "There is no such entity as consciousness; we are from moment to moment differently conscious...(consciousness is) the directional mechanism of attention." And paying attention (minding), thinking, and even memory are not bits of neuroanatomy like hippocampal formations. Not all words denote things. This is an entertaining book, an erudite discourse into history and philosophy, linguistics and logic. Neurologists, whose authority resides in the reality of the nervous system, may find it especially pertinent. We must be as clear as possible in our thinking about the mind and the brain. If they were identical, Dr. Szasz points out, we wouldn't have two very different words. This book is a must for those of us who need to deal rationally with the tempting tales of "neuromythology" issuing daily from the media, the drug companies, and our psychiatric colleagues. The author argues that most of the popular mind/brain theorists, in their materialist-reductionist simplifications, "...are writing science fiction or justifying the medical (psychiatric) control of deviance or both." He reminds us that people deceive themselves and others by twisting words, medicalizing straightforward sins such as bearing false witness into modern non-entities such as recovered memory syndrome, false memory syndrome, even alien abduction. Such literal or "concrete thinking" is supposed to be a symptom of schizophrenia which according to Dr. Szasz, is the "paradigmatic metaphoric illness of modernity." Quoting Immanuel Kant that "to think is to talk to oneself," the author asserts that thinking is "self-conversation," the subject acknowledging his inner voices as his own; and that "hearing voices" (auditory hallucinations, one cardinal "symptom" of Schizophrenia) are self-conversations that the subject disowns, attributing his inner voices to other "speakers" such as God, the FBI, etc. Tenacious in this central criticism of schizophrenia since his Myth of Mental Illness was published in 1961, Dr. Szasz speculates that "...never before in history have so many educated people wasted so much time and money as have diverse professionals squandered on studying this nonexistent illness." The Meaning of Mind is an easy but scholarly read, alive with quotes. Dr. Szasz leads us through six chapters: Thought: Self-Conversation Responsibility: Self-blame and Self-Praise Memory: Fabricating the Past and the Future Brain: The Abuse of Neuroscience Mind: The History of an Idea Modernity's Master Metaphors: Mental Illness and Mental Treatment Here's a work of philosophy, true love of logic, with relevance for daily life. It will open your mind - metaphorically, of course.

One of the great minds of our time is distilled to the essentials. Great wit and even greater insights. This and other Szasz offerings belong in the library of educated people.

Szasz is a psychiatrist who realized that the entire mental health profession is a load of crap - and so are politics, religion, and American sexual morality. In "The Untamed Tongue," Szasz dissects the language of almost every single field of human "knowledge," exposing hypocrisy and obfuscation with wit, clarity and precision. A must read for anyone interested in the role of language in thought control.

The struggle for freedom is unending; tyranny constantly renews itself and dons new faces. With ease we can retrospectively see the brutality of monarchy, theocracy, communism, and chattel slavery, but each of those survived long enough to lead to widespread brutality and bloodshed. In its heyday, each was considered both practical and necessary by the elites and the hoi polloi.

As James Madison is associated with opposition of unchecked clerical power, and William Lloyd Garrison to black slavery, Thomas Szasz is the leading opponent of psychiatric coercion.

With psychiatry as the leading internal ... to personal liberty in Western countries, and Szasz as its most articulate critic, he is arguably the most important philosopher of our time. "Liberation by Oppression" only serves to solidify the view that Szasz follows in the footsteps of Mill, Jefferson, Mises and Martin Luther King as a champion of freedom. He deserves our rapt attention.

Like Jefferson, Szasz writes such elegant prose that he is able to intellectually satisfy while stimulating moral outrage at the injustices he describes. Like all of his works, this book is a pleasure to read, brimming with erudition and a captivating journey into ideas. But at core it's a plea for toleration and decency, a humanitarian manifesto.

The American obsession with freedom was defiled by the blight of slavery. Our Constitution, the magnificent instrument of liberty, was used to define enslaved black people as three-fifths human. Even then psychiatric diagnoses were applied in the service of social control. Slaves who yearned to escape were said to be suffering from a mental illness called "drapetomania." Slaves who exhibited early signs of this disease, such as sulking, were "cured" by being whipped.

Szasz is remarkable in his ability to shed new light on well-examined historical events. He notes, for instance, that in the reprehensible Dred Scott decision, Chief Justice Taney states that at the time of the Declaration of Independence and the framing of the Constitution, "the negro might justy and lawfully be reduced to slavery FOR HIS BENEFIT." (emphasis added.) In the same way, Szasz observes, psychiatric patients, the so-called mentally ill, have long been subject to imprisonment and the most cruel "treatments" for their "own benefit." Since so many "mentally ill" people do not consider themselves to be ill, and since there are no medical tests that establish that they are ill, it has been essential for psychiatry to justify its coercive treatments by claiming that they are in the best interest of the unwilling patients. Paternalism was an indispensable rationale for chattel slavery, as it is for psychiatric slavery.

Psychiatry recognizes no aspect of life as beyond its authority. The right to self-medicate was once taken for granted by Americans, until they were stripped of it in the early 1900s. Americans from every walk of life, including Washington and Jefferson, self-administered opium for various discomforts. Since the burgeoning of the "therapeutic state," a term Szasz coined, such behavior is not just criminal but proof of uncontrollable addiction. Now, the prominent psychiatrist Sally Satel declares that "force is the best medicine" for addicts, and virtually everyone arrested for possession is assumed to be an addict who obliged to submit to 'therapy" and "education." Force was also the "best medicine" for non-compliant black slaves with drapetomania. Force, shows Szasz, is what psychiatry is about.

Szasz describes a frightening society that is virtually a cradle-to-grave psychiatric clinic. Preschoolers are given ... for "attention deficit hyperactive disorder." Parents are now required to allow their children to be given ... like Ritalin; if they resist they risk having the children taken by the state. Rescue workers at the site of the World Trade Center have "grief therapy" forced upon them. People who act strangely but not criminally are imprisoned, restrained, and drugged. People thought to be suicidal are taken into custody "for their own protection.

Psychiatry has thoroughly debased the justice system. As Szasz puts it: "Criminal law, based on a recognition of the intrinsically adversarial nature of the relationship between accused and accuser, separates the roles of prosecuting attorney and defense attorney. In contrast, mental health law, based on a denial of the intrinsically adversarial nature of the relationship between the person accused of mental illness and his accuser, combines and confuses the roles of prosecuting psychiatrist and defense psychiatrist: even when the psychiatrist imposes his intervention against his will, mental health law defines the psychiatrist's role as serving the best interests of the patient."

In this masterful work, Thomas Szasz describes the thorough undoing of legal and social protections in the name of psychiatry and "mental health." Despite the cliché that "mental illness is just like any other illness," anyone diagnosed with a "mental illness" is subject to coerced treatments, physical and chemical restraint, imprisonment, and the loss of freedom, without ever having to do harm or commit a crime. With remarkable breadth of scholarship, Szasz ties together his thesis that much of what justified chattel slavery now justifies psychiatric slavery.

Many who read this book will be shocked. As an abolitionist, Szasz challenges widely held beliefs, just as Madison and Garrison did. The ideas in this book will be new and challenging to most readers. But, unlike many scholars, Szasz writes prose that is crystal clear and sparkling. He does not hide behind a wall of jargon and pretentious nonsense, he writes to be understood.

Anyone who is interested in "mental health," criminal justice, American history, and social philosophy should consider "Liberation by Oppression" a "must read." It also fits nicely in the libraries of those who simply read to broaden their knowledge. Agree or disagree with him, Thomas Szasz has set forth a ... case that must be considered in light of the profound transformations wrought by the therapeutic nature of the modern state. And he has done it with great polish. To paraphrase Mencken, Szasz is one of the few scholars who can really write.

I love this book. This is a little book of maximums and quotes by Dr. Szasz. If you don't know Dr. Szasz, he is a psychiatrist who hates psychiatry. More correctly, but he objects to the medical model that underpins psychiatry. He believes that this error in it's basic assumptions has lead to bad consequences and blind alleys. His most famous book is called 'The Myth of Mental Illness.'

This concern with using a 'wrong model' has lead Dr. Szasz to look at language, and in this book of maximums are his thoughts on how we use language to define and color our moral judgments. It's kind of an expansion of the old proverb, 'what's good for the goose is good for the gander.' For instance, Dr. Szasz notes that we say 'policemen receive bribes,' but we say 'politicians receive campaign contributions.' Why the difference? Why do we say, 'tobacco is sold by merchants,' but 'marijuana is sold by pushers.' When we don't like a TV program, we wouldn't call a TV repair man. Why then, when we don't like the way a person behaves, do we call a medical psychiatrist?

The best way to get a feel for this book is just to read the preface and learn how the doctor came up with the title of this book. He says, 'we all know what is the first or "original" sin: eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But we have tended to forget what the second sin was: Speaking clearly.' In the first sin, God wished to prohibit man from knowing the difference between good and evil, and consequently Man could not make moral judgments. The knowledge of good and evil was the providence of only God. But man went against God's command, and by eating the fruit, became aware of something only God was meant aware of, the difference between good and evil. As a result, God punished man, and drove him out of the Garden.

The second sin occurred during the construction of the tower of Babble. At that time, all men spoke only one language, and because there was only one language, men could be clear with one another, and there was no limit to what they could accomplish; they could build a tower to the Heavens if they desired. But again, Man encroached on the providence of God: Thinking and Speaking clearly. God came down and punished Man by confusing his language and thereby confusing his thought process. That is why today, Man is enjoined to follow the law, and not worry about the details, they 'why's' and 'wherefore's.'

But all men are sinners. If a man is to be a man, it is his nature to question Authority, to make judgments, to wonder what is really good and what is really evil. It is Man's nature to attempt to think and speak clearly. But it has always been the goal of Authority to prevent Man from doing these things for himself without obtaining permission. In early history, it was the Church that demanded that Man not question Church wisdom. Then it was the Government state that demanded Man not questions the decrees of the state. Today, it the medical psychiatrists who seek to control us by confusing out thinking. 'Authorities have always tended to honor and reward those who close man's mind by confusing his tongue, and have always tended to fear and punish those who open it by the plain and proper use of language.'

Every age has it's high priests who seek to control us by debasing out language and confusing us. And every age has the iconoclasts who cry out that the Emperor has no clothes, and we are being bamboozled. Dr. Szasz sees himself in the latter category, with men like Voltaire, Bierce and Mencken.

This book is out-of-print, but is not difficult to find. Dr. Szasz has up-dated and released this book with a new title: 'The Untamed Tongue: A dissenting Dictionary,' and it is available through Amazon. However, in this case, more is not better. Make the effort and try and find the original

Fatal Freedom: The Ethics And Politics Of Suicide by Thomas Szasz (Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, State University of New York Health Science Center, Syracuse) is a thoughtful and persuasively written defense of the individual's right to voluntarily choose the time and manner of their own death. Criticizing the inhumanity of the established legal and medical policy prohibiting suicide for any reason allows extensive and widespread suffering, Fatal Freedom also reveals how suicide has been viewed down through the ages alongside other social practices about which public perception has changed. Very strongly recommended for academic and community library social issues collections in general, and psychology/health reference sections in particular, Fatal Freedom presents an emphatic presentation not to be ignored.

Thomas Szasz is one of century's brilliant social thinkers. He's best known for his criticism of psychiatric pseudo-science and coercive practices, but his intellectual reach is vast. In this remarkable book about suicide he defends the right of individuals to control their bodies and lives -- including the ways they choose to die. He takes issue with physicians having the power to determine our fate and places the choice and responsibility for suicide into the hands of the individual. He would end drug prohibition (including limits on access to prescription drugs), and permit adults (not children) to obtain the drugs necessary to commit suicide. He presents a convincing argument that physician-assisted suicide takes us farther from personal autonomy, making us more dependent and vulnerable. He notes that about a quarter of physicians in Holland, where physician-induced euthanasia is common, admit to having killed a patient without asking for the person's permission. As I write this review the American Medical Association is enlarging its interest in suicide prevention, but Szasz points out that doctors and psychiatrists commit suicide at much higher ratest than the general population. Szasz asks readers to look to the historical record of physician participation in euthanasia (Nazi germany, for instance) to see what moral depravity and mortal mayham have resulted. Szasz flatly supports the right of an individual to commit suicide without interference from physicians, psychiatrists or government. As is always true with Szasz writings, this book is tightly reasoned and beautifully written. It is a work of great compassion and honesty.

If you are bewildered by the debates over physician-assisted suicide, suicide prevention, and the legal right to suicide, then this book should answer your questions. Szasz demonstrates clearly and logically what a mess we have made of dying and how we can choose ethical, compassionate options that give power to the dying rather than to government and physicians. Why should individuals be deprived of the right to the means of dependable, dignified suicide? What are the dangers of giving doctors the power and tools to kill people? Why are physicians --who are themselves three times more likely to commit suicide than the general population-- the appropriate persons to engage in "suicide prevention"? How is the "war on drugs" stripping us of the power to control pain and death? Szasz tackles these and many other questions. He points out that in Holland, where physician-assisted suicide in common, 23 percent of physicians say they have participated in the killing of a patient WHO DID NOT AGREE TO BE KILLED. Is this compassionate medicine or nazi-style euthanasia? Szasz provides convincing answers to the complete array of questions surrounding suicide.

a penetrating and enlightening analysis of things that make men crazy, namely power and control.

Thomas Szasz is a real hero of consciousness, freedom and intelligence who is never afraid to disclose the information that hurts the orthodoxy where it counts.

This work, like so many of his others, is a shining example of the great American libertarian vanguard.

Enjoy.

although thomas szasz was wrong to say that mental illness is totally a myth and that there is no reason to believe that there are people with mental disorders as debilitating as physical disorders, he certainly was right in attacking the mental health system for its often dehumanizing effects on people who simply have not been 'encultured' enough for the comfort of those around them. some of his work can be dismissed as dated anti psychiatry extremism, but some of it is absolutely relevant and as important today as it was when published

The Manufacture of Madness is a fine historical analysis of psychiatry and the mental health movement, drawing comparisons between the medical establishment's treatment of deviants as mental patients and the Inquisition's treatment of deviants as witches. Radical, perhaps, although it must have seemed much more radical in 1970, when first published. Dr. Szasz knew his material well, having worked for twenty years as a psychiatrist in this country prior to writing the book.

His views were considered heretical by his colleagues (an irony that he makes much of) because he argued, quite strongly, that institutional psychiatry is dehumanizing both to patients and society as a whole because it deprives these people of all rights, treats them as objects to be repaired, and submits them to cruel tortures in the name of therapy. He went on to declare that mental illness itself is a myth; there has never been a scientific basis for treating social and behavioral deviance as stemming from the same causes as physical illnesses, nor reason to try to cure it. His central thesis is that institutional psychiatry fills the same role in modern times as the Inquisition did until only a few hundred years ago--a system of control and suppression of social deviants.

Good arguments for drug legalization (and deregulation of prescription drugs), but a little outdated as far as some of his allusions and political terminology go, and not precise enough in his use of the term "legalizers".

He ignores the distinctions between "decriminalization" and "legalization", and lumps all "legalizers" into a single category, as not being "good enough". He does not seem to realize that there is a wide spectrum of beliefs on drugs, ranging from his position, to the position that all drugs should be banned everywhere.

He is uncompromising, and this is politically defeating. Nonetheless, his position is admirable, and his idea of drugs as a "right" similiar to all other "rights" bandied about in political discourse today, is a good one.

Nice philosophy, and one I wish more accepted it, but he's too radical for today's politicians, who are still in the dark ages of social medicine.

Fear of people committing suicide easily, is Szasz's main hypothesis for why we regulate prescription and illicit drugs the way we do in America today.

This book is good for convincing one that drugs should be legalized, but it is no help for accomplishing that feat politically.

This book is a supremely courageous and truthful book written by one of the great luminaries of the age(s).
This book "cuts to the chase" as regards fundamental constitutional issues raised by laws regulating
the procurement, possession, sale, and use of drugs.

The book's most striking charge (a correct one, at that!) is that a fundamental tyranny overtook this nation about
90 years ago when "Americans" lost their property rights over their own bodies--all in the name of governmentally-controlled "truth in advertising" for drug sales.

However, this "seemingly benign" governmental goal created untold danger for the very people it was meant to
protect. Szasz rightfully puts America's so-called "drug problem" in proper perspective by suggesting that the
admonition "buyer beware" should have sufficed--for drugs, as for almost everything else.

In the most general terms, this book demonstrates that there are no shortcuts to a thorough-going approach to American Liberty and Freedom. Dr. Szasz very clearly, and effectively, corrects those who claim that drug laws be summarily repealed for any reasons other than their moral unacceptability in a free state.

Making proper analogy to the wrongful justification of the slavery of blacks in America (owing to their mischaracterization as property), Szasz makes it clear that the infringement of property rights (both of your body, and substances you might possess) lies at the heart of America's despotic and tyrannical so-called "War on Drugs."

Although he does not (if memory serves me correctly) directly cite the 9th Amendment in defense of all those who would fight this indigenous, governmentally-sponsored terrorism, he could have:

"THE ENUMERATION OF CERTAIN RIGHTS, IN THE CONSTITUTION, SHALL NOT BE CONSTRUED TO DENY OR DISPARAGE OTHERS RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE."

"What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms, remedy is set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is nature's manure." Thomas Jefferson

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When I got a copy of this book - having forgotten about Dr. Szasz's breadth of outlook and singular erudition - I thought I was going to read a nice little political tract condemning the current American Drug Prohibition. "Our Right to Drugs" is that, of course, but it is so much more - it is a call to intellectual and political arms.

The War on Drugs, as Dr. Szasz so carefully shows, is nothing less than a Jihad, a Holy War waged by the forces of reaction and restriction in our society against all those who think that there should be peaceful choice, or self-ownership, or genuine free thought. And like all Holy Wars, this one permits the worst atrocities to be visited on the unbelieving because they are not just wrong - they are evil.

Like many libertarians, Dr. Szasz has little use for compromise; in this case, by those who favor "decriminalization" or "medicalization" of psychoactive drugs. Such people, the author shows, will only end up replacing the current Ayatollahs (cops and ex-generals) with a new Inquisition lead by doctors and psychologists. In the world of physician-monitored drug usage, instead of being evil, anyone who wants to alter his or her own mood will be labeled as "sick" - and instead of being sent to jail, they will be forced into "treatment".

In trying to think of some literary comparison to "Our Right to Drugs", I can only think of Plato's records of certain iconoclastic dialogues about ancient Athenian closemindedness. Truely, Dr. Szasz is our Socrates.