This is a welcome treat! Too bad he's so roundly ignored. Psychiatry has become a fraudulent pseudoscience, a drug racket, and a social control mechanism. 21st Century Phrenology, with potent neuro-toxins. Psychiatry has done, and continues to do, FAR MORE HARM, than good. The DSM is a catalog of billing codes. Everything in it was either invented or created, - nothing in it was discovered. So-called "mental illnesses" are exactly as "real" as presents from Santa Claus, but not more real. Labeling somebody as having a "mental illness", is the very basis of stigma.....
Too bad you are simplistic and feel qualified to throw out the good with the bad. There is abuse of diagnoses and medications. However, many people would not be alive without psychiatric intervention. Guess you are the lucky one who has never needed anything beyond yourself. And I mean lucky... things could have been as bad for you as they have been for me. Lucky you!
...."abuse of diagnoses and medications"?....And, how many people have died BECAUSE of these alleged "psychiatric interventions"? Quite a lot. Only a very few have been 'saved" by psychiatry, and that was by chance. I'm going to ignore your personal insults. After all, you have NOT read the book....
Telling your story is as therapeutic as it gets. That’s about all one does in psychology and psychiatry except they give you drugs, or lock you away.
"By diagnosing unwanted behavior as mental illness, psychiatrists, Szasz argues, absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions and instead blame their alleged illness."
Yes, that's one aspect of it. Another, though, is that unwanted behavior, including expressing unwanted ideas, can be dismissed rather than taken seriously, and then be medicated away. This was done forcibly in the Soviet Union to people we at that time viewed as perfectly sane political dissidents and/or people with religious opinions that departed from the Party-approved norm.
"By diagnosing unwanted behavior as mental illness, psychiatrists, Szasz argues, absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions and instead blame their alleged illness."
And people don't kill people, guns do.
And people don't become drug addicts as a result of their own choices; drug companies are to blame.
A person is only individually guilty if their name is Donald Trump, or if they ever said anything nice about Donald Trump.
I have read War of the Weak many times. It’s an all expansive look at Eugenics. I read it again recently and it shows clearly how what we are experiencing is the same culling of those deemed lesser than. He has painted a picture of who these people are and how they think. I highly recommend reading this to almost understand how they see us.
Szasz is tricky. What Howard Zinn is to history, Szasz is to psychiatry. Psychiatry is unique in medicine in that it has a teleological problem in how they define illness - it is defined by the symptoms, and has never been able to identify the etiology of the disorders it treats. big pharma was, and continues to be driven by profit and oftenntimes work against the interests of patients. The problem is that Szasz's reaction to that is to suggest a reactive, antinomian approach to the established mental health field that was not, at the end of the day, about improving the lives of those with psychiatric disorders, but about being defiant to the establishment. It is important to remember when he wrote this - it was the time of Esalen, TA, encounter groups, and liberation psychotherapies, as John Steadman Rice called them. They were revolutionaries and thought they were going to change the world. He had some appealing ideas, but he created nothing more than a fad, and like all fads, they have an initial appeal, but do not stand the test of time and do more harm than good.
Zinn points out historical events that are factual and indicative of imbalance and problems. He is a counterbalance to history being written by the winners. The problem is that Zinn's work does not lead to overall objective clarity on all aspects of the the history of the US - it leads to frustration and hostility with the existing social and political structures. He may give clarity to those who want to fundamentally change the US - He does not give ideas on how to reform and improve the country. His work leads to frustration and disillusionment with the US, leading to a desire to destroy existing structures, throw them out and start over again. Zinn is not a discourse of reform and improvement, it is a discourse of revolution. In the same way, Szasz has good points, but his theme does not lead to improvements in the system that is flawed but has merits, but advocates for its overthrow, an overthrow that would result in many people who are in desperate need of psychiatric attention suffering cruel and avoidable fates. There is a phrase that a famous psychiatrist I worked with used to say tongue in cheek - "Most people who try to convince you they are sick arenʼt. Most people who try to convince you they arenʼt sick are." Szasz is a great message for those in the first part of that statement. He is dangerous for those in the latter.
Many who have removed overprocessed and synthetic food-like substances, and most carbohydrates, from their diets report clearer mind, mood stabilization (I can attest to that myself), and reduction or even resolution of specific mental disorders, such as bipolar and depressive conditions, and other disorders. Improvements sometimes show up within days of making the change.
This approach seems absent from the treatment of mental and emotional dysfunction, with pharmaceuticals being used, as well as long-running "therapy" sessions.
This is a welcome treat! Too bad he's so roundly ignored. Psychiatry has become a fraudulent pseudoscience, a drug racket, and a social control mechanism. 21st Century Phrenology, with potent neuro-toxins. Psychiatry has done, and continues to do, FAR MORE HARM, than good. The DSM is a catalog of billing codes. Everything in it was either invented or created, - nothing in it was discovered. So-called "mental illnesses" are exactly as "real" as presents from Santa Claus, but not more real. Labeling somebody as having a "mental illness", is the very basis of stigma.....
I feel it was conceived as another way to control.
Too bad you are simplistic and feel qualified to throw out the good with the bad. There is abuse of diagnoses and medications. However, many people would not be alive without psychiatric intervention. Guess you are the lucky one who has never needed anything beyond yourself. And I mean lucky... things could have been as bad for you as they have been for me. Lucky you!
...."abuse of diagnoses and medications"?....And, how many people have died BECAUSE of these alleged "psychiatric interventions"? Quite a lot. Only a very few have been 'saved" by psychiatry, and that was by chance. I'm going to ignore your personal insults. After all, you have NOT read the book....
Telling your story is as therapeutic as it gets. That’s about all one does in psychology and psychiatry except they give you drugs, or lock you away.
"By diagnosing unwanted behavior as mental illness, psychiatrists, Szasz argues, absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions and instead blame their alleged illness."
Yes, that's one aspect of it. Another, though, is that unwanted behavior, including expressing unwanted ideas, can be dismissed rather than taken seriously, and then be medicated away. This was done forcibly in the Soviet Union to people we at that time viewed as perfectly sane political dissidents and/or people with religious opinions that departed from the Party-approved norm.
"By diagnosing unwanted behavior as mental illness, psychiatrists, Szasz argues, absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions and instead blame their alleged illness."
And people don't kill people, guns do.
And people don't become drug addicts as a result of their own choices; drug companies are to blame.
A person is only individually guilty if their name is Donald Trump, or if they ever said anything nice about Donald Trump.
I have read War of the Weak many times. It’s an all expansive look at Eugenics. I read it again recently and it shows clearly how what we are experiencing is the same culling of those deemed lesser than. He has painted a picture of who these people are and how they think. I highly recommend reading this to almost understand how they see us.
Jon Ronson ‘The psychopath test’ is a really funny and also at times insightful book about the explosion of mental illness.
Szasz is tricky. What Howard Zinn is to history, Szasz is to psychiatry. Psychiatry is unique in medicine in that it has a teleological problem in how they define illness - it is defined by the symptoms, and has never been able to identify the etiology of the disorders it treats. big pharma was, and continues to be driven by profit and oftenntimes work against the interests of patients. The problem is that Szasz's reaction to that is to suggest a reactive, antinomian approach to the established mental health field that was not, at the end of the day, about improving the lives of those with psychiatric disorders, but about being defiant to the establishment. It is important to remember when he wrote this - it was the time of Esalen, TA, encounter groups, and liberation psychotherapies, as John Steadman Rice called them. They were revolutionaries and thought they were going to change the world. He had some appealing ideas, but he created nothing more than a fad, and like all fads, they have an initial appeal, but do not stand the test of time and do more harm than good.
Please clarify what you think Zinn is to history, so that we can perceive what you're trying to say.
Zinn points out historical events that are factual and indicative of imbalance and problems. He is a counterbalance to history being written by the winners. The problem is that Zinn's work does not lead to overall objective clarity on all aspects of the the history of the US - it leads to frustration and hostility with the existing social and political structures. He may give clarity to those who want to fundamentally change the US - He does not give ideas on how to reform and improve the country. His work leads to frustration and disillusionment with the US, leading to a desire to destroy existing structures, throw them out and start over again. Zinn is not a discourse of reform and improvement, it is a discourse of revolution. In the same way, Szasz has good points, but his theme does not lead to improvements in the system that is flawed but has merits, but advocates for its overthrow, an overthrow that would result in many people who are in desperate need of psychiatric attention suffering cruel and avoidable fates. There is a phrase that a famous psychiatrist I worked with used to say tongue in cheek - "Most people who try to convince you they are sick arenʼt. Most people who try to convince you they arenʼt sick are." Szasz is a great message for those in the first part of that statement. He is dangerous for those in the latter.
Thank you for your long, thoughtful and well-informed reply.
I found this video on YT,12 years ago, 49K views: Thomas Szasz: The Function of Psychiatry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY78qJNLoQ0
Many who have removed overprocessed and synthetic food-like substances, and most carbohydrates, from their diets report clearer mind, mood stabilization (I can attest to that myself), and reduction or even resolution of specific mental disorders, such as bipolar and depressive conditions, and other disorders. Improvements sometimes show up within days of making the change.
This approach seems absent from the treatment of mental and emotional dysfunction, with pharmaceuticals being used, as well as long-running "therapy" sessions.