Psychiatric Slavery

by Thomas Szasz

Re-examining psychiatric interventions from a cultural-historical and political-economic perspective, Szasz demonstrates that the main problem that faces mental health policymakers today is adult dependency. Millions of Americans, diagnosed as mentally ill, are drugged and confined by doctors for non-criminal conduct, go legally unpunished for the crimes they commit, and are supported by the state - not because they are sick, but because they are unproductive and unwanted. Obsessed with the twin beliefs that misbehaviour is a medical disorder and that the duty of the state is to protect adults from themselves, we have replaced criminal-punitive sentences with civil-therapeutic programmes. The result is the relentless loss of individual liberty and erosion of personal responsibility - symptoms of the transformation of a Constitutional Republic into a Therapeutic State, unconstrained by the rule of law.

Genres: Psychology, Mental Health, Health

176 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1977

About the author

Thomas Stephen Szasz (pronounced /sas/; born April 15, 1920 in Budapest, Hungary) was a psychiatrist and academic. He was Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. He was a prominent figure in the antipsychiatry movement, a well-known social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, and of the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as of scientism. He is well known for his books, The Myth of Mental Illness (1960) and The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement which set out some of the arguments with which he is most associated.

Reviews

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Szasz has for the most part fallen out of the main stream. It brings to question whether his writings, and ideas are mere anachronisms today , as it is from a time where mass imprisonment of the mentally ill was a norm in America, or if simply the anti-psychiatrists have simply been out breed by the institutions they spoke so loudly against.
I am somewhat new to writings of szaz even though I did read his famous 'myth of mental illness' a year ago, but I suspect there is much to be gleaned from his writings especially when it seems that many of the mentally ill - who lack support - have ended up funneling through the prison system.
(To contextualize, read : https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/sho....)
I will, when I get the chance, move onto his other books.
This exact text was not a great place to start. While, it certainty will give one a slight rundown of some of his theories it is actually mostly a treatise on the case of Kennith Donaldson - an outspoken critic and victim of coercive 'treatments. This book explains the subsequent context of the supreme court decision which ruled
"A State cannot constitutionally confine a non-dangerous individual who is capable of surviving safely in freedom by themselves or with the help of willing and responsible family members or friends." source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Con...

Overall this was solid. Not great, but sustainable on its own.

Recommended for those:
- curious about mental illness in its relation to society
- thinking about its history
- those disturbed from the famous film 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ' curious about its historical context

[V · Rating 5 out of 5]

As relevant today as it was when it was first published.

[John Hancock · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://psychiatricsurvivors.wordpres...