Thomas Szasz was a psychiatrist and academic who fiercely challenged the moral and scientific underpinnings of psychiatry. A key figure in the antipsychiatry movement, he focused on the social control aspects of medicine and scientism. His work questioned the very concept of mental illness, drawing parallels between historical forms of persecution and the modern mental health system. Szasz offered a radical perspective on human psychology and society.
Every age, labels others to a particular fate, such as the witch consigned to the fire. The priest has now been replaced by the psychiatrist and this text examines the role of medicine as a more insidious tyrant than religion, as it claims to be beneficial to both the patient and the commonwealth.
This book is a collection of the earliest essays of Thomas Szasz, in which he staked out his position on “the nature, scope, methods, and values of psychiatry.” On each of these issues, he opposed the official position of the psychiatric profession. Where conventional psychiatrists saw themselves diagnosing and treating mental illness, Szasz saw them stigmatizing and controlling persons; where they saw hospitals, Szasz saw prisons; where they saw courageous professional advocacy of individualism and freedom, Szasz saw craven support of collectivism and oppression.
In Western thought, suicide has evolved from sin to sin-and-crime, to crime, to mental illness, and to semilegal act. A legal act is one we are free to think and speak about and plan and perform, without penalty by agents of the state. While dying voluntarily is ostensibly legal, suicide attempts and even suicidal thoughts are routinely punished by incarceration in a psychiatric institution. Although many people believe the prevention of suicide is one of the duties the modern state owes its citizens, Szasz argues that suicide is a basic human right and that the lengths to which the medical industry goes to prevent it represent a deprivation of that right. Drawing on his general theory of the myth of mental illness, Szasz makes a compelling case that the voluntary termination of one's own life is the result of a decision, not a disease. He presents an in-depth examination and critique of contemporary anti-suicide policies, which are based on the notion that voluntary death is a mental health problem, and systematically lays out the dehumanizing consequences of psychiatrizing suicide prevention. If suicide be deemed a problem, it is not a medical problem. Managing it as if it were a disease, or the result of a disease, will succeed only in debasing medicine and corrupting the law. Pretending to be the pride of medicine, psychiatry is its shame.
This intriguing book undercuts everything you thought you knew about psychotherapy.
“The landmark book that argued that psychiatry consistently expands its definition of mental illness to impose its authority over moral and cultural conflict.” — New York Times “Controversial and influential . . . an iconoclastic work.” — Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times Book Review A 50th Anniversary Edition of Thomas Szasz’s famous, influential critique of the field of psychiatry, with a new preface on the age of Prozac, Ritalin, and the rise of designer drugs.
50th Anniversary Edition With a New Preface and Two Bonus Essays The most influential critique of psychiatry ever written, Thomas Szasz's classic book revolutionized thinking about the nature of the psychiatric profession and the moral implications of its practices. By diagnosing unwanted behavior as mental illness, psychiatrists, Szasz argues, absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions and instead blame their alleged illness. He also critiques Freudian psychology as a pseudoscience and warns against the dangerous overreach of psychiatry into all aspects of modern life.
Grundlagen einer Theorie des persönlichen Verhaltens
Vor 50 Jahren sorgte Thomas Szasz mit seinem Buch „The Myth of Mental Illness“ für Aufruhr. Es stellte das komplette Selbstverständnis der Psychiatrie als humanmedizinische Wissenschaft infrage. Ob jemand psychisch „normal“ oder „verrückt“ sei, sei eine willkürliche Definition, so Szasz. Anders als bei somatischen Erkrankungen finden sich für einen Großteil der psychiatrischen „Krankheiten“ nämlich keine eindeutigen Ursachen. Heute, in Zeiten der Hirnscanner, die bunte Bildchen zeigen, deren Suggestivkraft hoch, deren Erklärungswert dagegen gering ist, feiert der Mythos der Geisteskrankheit erneut Triumphe. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser Entwicklung wird die Lektüre von Szaszs revolutionärem Buch zum Aha-Erlebnis. Seine Positionen decken sich auf interessante Weise mit Überlegungen aus der Systemtheorie, denn systemisch gesehen können biologische Faktoren nie das Verhalten eines menschlichen Individuums erklären. Die vorliegende Neuausgabe wurde vom Autor ergänzt, aktualisiert und in vielen Formulierungen geschärft. Für die deutsche Ausgabe wurde der Text vollständig neu übersetzt.
