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Ceremonial chemistry : the ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers
Published in Unknown Binding by Routledge and K. Paul ()
Author: Thomas Stephen Szasz
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Institutionalized and state-sponsored persecution
An excellent analysis of the institutionalized and state-sponsored persecution of certain rule-breaking behaviour (illicit drug use)and the similarities between cultural and religious demands for specific mood-altering ceremonies and substances. This was the first book by Szasz that I read and I was impressed by depth of his philosophical and medical understanding of human behaviour. After reading this book I purchased, read and re-read the Myth of Mental Illness within 24 hours. Although Cermonial Chemistry was a delight to read, I think the Myth of Mental Illness is a timeless read and a comprehensive, logical and linguistic torpedo aimed squarley at an institutionalized war against human responsibility and the deep suspicion of the state against those who question through behaviour or language the role of the state in prescribing the rules of human conduct. Ceremonial Chemistry is an important book and a cornerstone in the debate on the inevitable de-criminalization of illicit drugs or the continued illegalization of certain foods and plants.

really neet.
great oppinions. easy to read. very inciteful. must have!...


Psychiatric Slavery
Published in Hardcover by Free Press (1977)
Author: Thomas Stephen Szasz
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Points out many inconsistencies regarding the Donaldson case
In his book, Psychiatric Slavery, Szasz makes the comparison of involuntary institutionalization and slavery. The book primarily discusses the case of Kenneth Donaldson, which was a Supreme Court case on the right of treatment. The book discusses the various briefs of the case, elaborating on various issues.

Donaldson was institutionalized because he told his parents that the neighbors were trying to poison him. Although his parents sent him to an asylum for this, Donaldson maintained he was not mentally disturbed.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) assisted Donaldson in attempting to gain his freedom, but in a bizarre way. Although Donaldson wanted nothing to do with medication and shock therapy, he sued the hospital director because he was not receiving treatment. From the data presented, I got the impression that the ACLU used Donaldson for their own ends, which was to strengthen the power of psychiatry.


Sex by Prescription: The Startling Truth About Today's Sex Therapy
Published in Paperback by Syracuse Univ Pr (Trade) (1990)
Author: Thomas Stephen Szasz
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flawed, but fun
Szasz's intentions here are good here; as usual he seeks to expose the messianic pretensions of the mental health movement. In this case, his target is the sex therapy and sex education rackets. Unfortunately, his partisanship sometimes leads to attacks based on shoddy reasoning. A few examples will suffice: Szasz accuses the noted sex therapist William Masters of continuing the psychiatric persecution of homosexuals. His evidence? While visiting California once, Masters declined to comment on the Briggs Initiative, an anti-homosexual ballot measure. I certainly think this initiative deserved to be condemned, but Szsaz gives no context for Masters' silence(which, after all, was just that, silence). We are not told why Masters refused to comment, or even how much he knew about the initative. Perhaps Masters didn't know anything at all about it. I am speculating, of course, but can do little else given the paucity of details in Szsaz's account.
One more example: Szasz claims that Mary Calderone, the doyenne of sex education, is actually a sexual authoritarian. He bases this accusation partly on her stated opposition to handing out contraceptives to teenagers. Making a fine art of literalism here, Szasz argues that Calderone must oppose handing out birth control to married nineteen year olds. I think most intelligent readers would asume that by "teenagers" Calderone meant minors.
All this said, the book is entertaining, and makes valid points about the pathologization of sexual behaviour by self-styled "experts". Particularly interesting are passages attacking circumcision, sex change therapy, and the use of porn films in medical schools. Fans of Szasz's potent combination of moral passion and acerbic polemicism will not come away disappointed.


Thomas Szasz Primary Values and Major Content
Published in Paperback by Prometheus Books (1983)
Authors: Lee S. Weinberg, Thomas Stephen Szasz, and Richard E. Vatz
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Useful synopsis of Thomas Szasz's major ideas with critiques
Thomas Szasz is a champion of individual autonomy and personal responsibility. This is his primary value.

Szasz is also regarded by some as "the most controversial psychiatrist in the world." He displays the fearless courage to question the most fundamental tenets of the entire "profession" of psychiatry.

Because of the volume of Szasz's writings - some 20 books and over 400 published articles - authors Richard Vatz (professor of rhetoric) and Lee Weinberg (professor of legal studies) have done us a great service by including Sasz's main ideas in one volume. Furthermore, to achieve balance, they've included some important critiques of Szasz's work.

Szasz's first major contention is that "mental illness" is a myth. Szasz does not deny the occurrence of unusual, unconventional, and destructive thought, communication, and behavior - and the resulting suffering - generally included under the "mental illness" umbrella. He does take issue with the semantics: the definitions, who gains from the definitions, and who loses as a result of them.

According to the authors, "To Szasz, the use of strategic metaphors - especially the camouflaged use of such metaphors - deprives humankind of its greatest freedom: autonomy. Unlike religious and democratic political persuaders who claim no false identity and implicitly recognize man's autonomy, psychiatrists present themselves as scientists and explicitly deny the right of autonomy to those whom they choose to define and control."

Szasz claims that as a result of psychiatric definitions, psychiatrits - as well as the political system through them - gain the power to effectively "convict" people, incarcerate them, and subject them to involuntary "drug treatment" and other forms of dehumanization, without trial, judge, or jury.

Another of Szasz's major contentions is that "deviant behavior is freedom of choice." To Szasz, autonomy implies that individuals own their own bodies and should be free to do with them whatever they like, provided they don't harm others. This includes taking drugs and comitting suicide.

In my opinion, one of Szasz's geatest contributions to humanity is his revelation of how words and definitions are used to gain power over others and effectively enslave them. Authors Vatz and Weinberg were remiss in that they did not include a chapter on this topic, particularly seeing that Szasz wrote two books on it: 'The Second Sin' and 'Heresies.'

Also, in my opinion, Vatz and Weinberg are mistaken in the above quote where they say, "Unlike religious and democratic political persuaders who claim no false identity and implicitly recognize man's autonomy..." Many religious leaders demand all kinds of obedience which deny man's autonomy. Some claim special identities with characteristics like "papal infallibility."

Similarly, most political leaders operate in the name of government with the special identity of having the power to solve all kinds of problems mere mortals can't handle. Most political persuaders explicitly deny man's autonomy: "You may not commit suicide"; "You may only put into your body what we permit."

In 'Heresies' Szasz wrote: "This is what poets and politicians, psychotics and psychiatrists, therapists and theologians have in common: they all deal with metaphors that sustain the dignity and lives of some and destroy those of others; and they all deal with metaphors mendaciously..."

Despite this one shortcoming, authors Vatz and Weinberg have done an excellent job in encapsulating Szasz's central ideas in one volume. They handle the closely related issues of personal autonomy and individual responsibility particularly well.

I highly recommend this book, particularly for anyone interested in freedom and its destruction.

Frederick Mann


Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry
Published in Hardcover by Basic Books (1976)
Author: Thomas Stephen, Szasz
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An oxymororn for a psychiatrist
Szasz is a libertarian with hatred for totalitarian governments. Nothing wrong with that. But he teamed up with the Church of Scientology years ago as like-minded bedfellows to "do in" the practice of psychiatry. Szasz, most likely because of well-felt political beliefs. The Church of Scientology, most likely because its founder saw psychiatry as competition to his Way to Happiness, the e-meter.

Szasz is old thought that has been debunked by current scientific knowledge about the brain.

Straight Thought on a Serpentine Subject
Prof. Thomas Szasz recognizes that so-called mental illness which are not based in actualMEDICAL pathology are "diseases" only by the analogic and metaphorical qualities of language. Prof. Sasz maintains that the mind is not the brain, the mental functions are not reducible to brain functions, and that so-called "mental diseases" are not disases but are refelctions and manifestations of the way persons deal with problems-in-living. Because of his respect for human dignity and human freedom, Szasz is a classical liberal whose writings are compatible with the freedom and liberty issues characteristic of the so-called "right wing" section of the political and spectrum. Szasz is incisive, pungent, brilliant, insightful on the role of the threaputic industry within the totalitarian state and the uses of psychiatric voodoo for control of persons and thought. Accordingly, he comes across as a spokesperson of the liberty-freedom perspective -- what Alice in Wonderland said is the same thing as love, namely, minding one's own business. AS Szasz, points out, the psychiatric concept of "disease" attempts to make the mind, will and emotions a material object which supposedly can be "treated". His view of human freedom shapes his view of politics. The "mental" illness are social constructions in the form of political arrangments for exerting power over other beings -- exactly what the Totalitarlian Left sets itself to accomplish with self-rightous vigor. The various functional mental illness are real behaviors, but they are that, behaviors, not diseases or "symptoms" of "disease". Statists, who begin with an ethic of control, tend to oppose Szazian thought. Szasz, who does not begin with a political platform, does article values of freedom and recognition of the religious and ideological nature of psychiatric voodoo, does make conclusions which are favorable to human freedom rather than to a global psychiatric ward. Prof. Szasz presents is one of the foremost, perhaps the foremost challenge to the theology of psychiatry and the efforts of that psychiatry to subject mankind to its impirmatur.

Neither cruel nor offensive: compassionate and rational
T.S. Szasz reminds us that schizophrenia never existed in any medical records before the 20th century. It is an invention, or merely a new label for a kind of behaviour that previously belonged to other medical or social classifications.

As most of his readers already know, Szasz rightly believes that there ain't no such thing as a mental illness. Not as long as we mean "illness" like we mean it when we speak of any "illnesses" except the so-called "mental" ones. What we call mental illness is actually merely a certain kind of (litteraly) /abnormal/ (out of the norm) behaviour.

Schizophrenia is a myth.

A must read for open-minded people not too obsessed with that "libertarian-conservative" sticker...


The myth of mental illness: foundations of a theory of personal conduct
Published in Unknown Binding by Paladin ()
Author: Thomas Stephen Szasz
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Meet more people, read more books.
I bought this book 8 or 9 years ago when I was a 22-year-old student who roamed the earth forming tidy little opinions on everything I came across. This book fit perfectly into my own opinions, which amounted to telling those who are "mentally ill" to buck up or learn self-control. I don't want to get out of bed some days, but I do. I want to spend more than I have to get things that I want, but I don't. I'm scared sometimes, but I deal with it. Its part of growing up as a responsible person. I thought that as a society we could not tolerate excuses for laziness and failure to control ones desires or fears. The last thing I thought we needed was a massive cradle for the country in the form of the psychiatric community.
Now I am a 30 year old attorney. After 8 tumultuous years I have been diagnosed with Bipolar Depression. I see now how Thomas Szasz's book gave me the intellectual ammunition I needed in support of my prior, ignorant (literally, not pejoratively) views on the subject. I just didn't know. But I didn't allow for the fact that there might be a world of experience beyond what I had dealt with to that point in my life. Now I have found out the hard way. I can't blame people for buying into this book, I did myself. I can only say that if you do find yourself agreeing with this book, suspend judgment until you have met and at least become somewhat acquainted with individuals who are mentally ill or read more books on the subject with an actual open mind, meaning acknowledging that you may not know yet what a mental illness is or what a diagnosed person is dealing with. Of course, this probably would have been beyond me when I was 22 and reading this book. But I'll say it anyway for the one or two exceptional people out there.

"The Myth of Mental Illness" is not Szasz's magnum opus.
Though this book might be of paramount importance for those who desire to find an antithetical position to the "Doctors for the pathologizing of human behavior," I think it a terrible mistake to read this book with the assumption that understanding Szasz will be the result. Written early in his career, this book, like Beethoven's early symphonies, deserves not the attention it receives for the titilating title. I believe the influence of Karl Kraus caused the about face demonstrated by "The Myth of Psychotherapy" from the position outlined in "The Ethics of Psychoanalysis," both books he published later. For those that desire to find a summation of Szasz in one volume, I would recommend "Insanity."

The Myth Revisited
Dr. Szasz'definitive work should be revisited by all mental health professionals in this new era of "managed care" and its resultant "new mental health system". Although I don't agree with everything that Dr. Szasz claimed in his groundbreaking book, it seems to me that those who considered him a quack and continued the medical model of mental illness for the last 4+ decades have not proven him wrong. We have miserably failed the "mentally ill", "mentally disordered", people with "problems in living", or whatever term one uses these days. The mental health system and its providers these days use the excuse of managed care to explain its failures, but would be better advised to read or reread Dr. Szasz's forewarning of 40 years ago. It is time to rethink the problem, and a good place to start is with the "Myth of Mental Illness"-before the death of the mental health system is upon us.


The Myth of Psychotherapy: Mental Healing As Religion, Rhetoric, and Repression
Published in Hardcover by Doubleday (1978)
Author: Thomas Stephen, Szasz
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A Better Writer
Thomas Szasz has become a better writer since he wrote "The Myth of Mental Illness" in 1961. It is clearer in this book that he is just smearing psychotherapy than in the former book, where his smears are better hidden amongst erudite references to twentieth-century philosophy and other confusing stuff. That's why this book, although better written, isn't as brilliant as the former, in my opinion. Psychotherapy has posed an enormous threat to people who don't want their ego-compensations exposed. The power of the backlash against the discoveries of Freud should not be underestimated, and this would account for the enormous market for the works of Thomas Szasz, which are just pure anti-psych propaganda.

A PIVITIOL STUDY
This book and this book in particular were pivitol in my true understanding of "mental illness". I just wish more doctors would read this book, and have half the guts szasz has when it comes to defending the victims of this modern witch hunt we seem to accept all to willingly as part of modern life.


Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted
Published in Paperback by Syracuse Univ Pr (Trade) (1998)
Author: Thomas Stephen Szasz
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Cruel towards the mentally sick!
It is not surprising that Szasz' business model is built around denying the existence of mental illnesses and making money out of those ignorant of the problems and torture the mentally sick undergo. Anyone who truly understands a mentally ill friend or relative would instantly disagree with Szasz. Szasz has no convincing answers for why mental illnesses run in families? Why does Lithium (and/or several other drugs) restore a degree of normalcy in those affected by bipolar disorder? While the individual is still responsible for his actions, helping him lead a normal life is the least amount of compassion expected from the society.

Szasz' worldview is Cruel and not terribly Compassionate
If Thomas Szasz does not want public funds spent to take care of the mentally ill, the homeless and subsatnce abusers, he has every right to say so. What I objects to is his philosophical dogma which denies the existence of mental illness and addiction a priori. His pat answer is always just to leave everyone alone to live their lives as they please and accept "responsibility" for their actions. Even thogh he is supposed to be a medical doctor, he ignores a fact that anyone who has taken a few biology classes should know: The brain is the organ that governs behavior!!!!! When someting goes wrong with the brain, strange and/or self-destructive behavior may occur. Szasz sees the actions of the mentally ill as a sign of weak character, but by definition, behavior caused by mental illness CONTRASTS with the idividual's usual behavior. For instance, a usually active and sociable teenage girl becomes overwealmed by self hatred and uncontrolable sorrow. She locks herself in her room and is contemplating swollowing a bottle of sleeping pills. Her feelings and behavior are just as much of a mystery to her as they are to others, but she cannot control them. What to do? Just let her die? Defend her "right" to do anything she "wants"--even if she is the victim of a brain disease that could be corrected with medication? Just let her die and say "well, if some people can't cut the mustard, we're better off without them. Let the unfit die out." This seems to be what Szasz would do, given his philosophy that society owes nothing to its troubled members. And I for one feel that this philosophy is monstrous. What if someone with Alsheimer's wanders into a snow storm wearing nothing but a bathrobe? Would Szasz let him die too, or are some people more worthy of treatment and preservation than others? Some brain disease are labeled as "Psychiatric" and others as "Neurological." Szasz has made a co! mpletely arbitrary decision to deny the existence of any disease that has been placed in the former category. If epilepsy had been labeled as a psychiatric condition by the medical establishment, he would be compelled by his philosophy to deny its existence and say that people have siezures because they are irresponsible and just seeking attention. Even though Dr. Szasz sets up and supports this arbitrary distintion, mainstream modern science does not. Psychiatry and neurology are converging and may one day merge. After all, they are both medical specialties dealing with the same organ. With the knowledge of behavior and brain chemistry that we are rapidly gaining, we may someday eliminate suicide, psychosis and addiction from our world (or at least radically reduce their occurance and the harm they cause). This hope is based on empirical knowlege and true compassion for "society's unwanted."

Important ideas, but what to do with them?
Szasz is insightful into the ideas of mental illness and the use of such a term. Does a value judgement such as "mentally ill" or "sane" belong to the field of medicine? Humanity is now noticing the unstable polarity which is the essence to such a judgement, but in this book Szasz discusses the dilemma of what to do when people still exhibit behavior which we want to fix. How does one heal? And isn't healing diseases part of medicine? Labels such as mentally ill are simply excuses to take away another person's free will in order to try to help them. Yes, many times one does help another, but labelling that person as "wrong" or ill is not the right way to remedy a situation. In this book Szasz approaches the ides of autonomy of the individual under a system which claims to be a medical, scientific field, but is a human intitution treating other humans as if they were not humans.


The Age of Madness: The History of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization, Presented in Selected Texts.
Published in Paperback by Doubleday (1974)
Author: Thomas Stephen, Comp. Szasz
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From Patients to Persons: The Psychiatric Critiques of Thomas Szasz, Peter Sedgwick, and R.D. Laing (American University Studies, Series V: Philoso)
Published in Hardcover by Peter Lang Publishing (1993)
Author: Janet Vice
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