Szasz Under Fire

Author : Jeffrey A. Schaler
Publisher : Open Court
ISBN 13 : 0812699327
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Szasz Under Fire written by Jeffrey A. Schaler and published by Open Court. This book was released on 2015-11-05 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since he published The Myth of Mental Illness in 1961, professor of psychiatry Thomas Szasz has been the scourge of the psychiatric establishment. In dozens of books and articles, he has argued passionately and knowledgeably against compulsory commitment of the mentally ill, against the war on drugs, against the insanity defense in criminal trials, against the "diseasing" of voluntary humanpractices such as addiction and homosexual behavior, against the drugging of schoolchildren with Ritalin, and for the right to suicide. Most controversial of all has been his denial that "mental illness" is a literal disease, treatable by medical practitioners. In Szasz Under Fire, psychologists, psychiatrists, and other leading experts who disagree with Szasz on specific issues explain the reasons, with no holds barred, and Szasz replies cogently and pungently to each of them. Topics debated include the nature of mental illness, the right to suicide, the insanity defense, the use and abuse of drugs, and the responsibilities of psychiatrists and therapists. These exchanges are preceded by Szasz's autobiography and followed by a bibliography of his works.

Author : Thomas S. Szasz
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0062104748
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Myth of Mental Illness written by Thomas S. Szasz and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-07-12 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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 The 50th anniversary edition of the most influential critique of psychiatry every written, with a new preface on the age of Prozac and Ritalin and the rise of designer drugs, plus two bonus essays. 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.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780815605102
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cruel Compassion written by Thomas Szasz and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1998-02-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cruel Compassion is the capstone of Thomas Szasz's critique of psychiatric practices. Reexamining psychiatric interventions from a cultural-historical and political-economic perspective, Szasz demonstrates that the main problem that faces mental health policy makers today is adult dependency. Millions of Americans, diagnosed as mentally ill, are drugged and confined by doctors for noncriminal 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 misbehavior 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 'programs.' The result is the relentless loss of individual liberty, erosion of personal responsibility, and destruction of the security of persons and property—symptoms of the transformation of a Constitutional Republic into a Therapeutic State, unconstrained by the rule of law. Szasz shows convincingly that not until we separate therapy from coercion—much as the founders separated theology from coercion—shall we be able to get a handle on our seemingly intractable psychiatric and social problems. No contemporary thinker has done more than Thomas Szasz to expose the myths and misconceptions surrounding insanity and the practice of psychiatry. Now, in Cruel Compassion, he gives us a sobering look at some of our most cherished notions about our humane treatment of society's unwanted, and perhaps more importantly, about ourselves as a compassionate and democratic people.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780815603337
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Our Right to Drugs written by Thomas Szasz and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1996-04-01 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Our Right to Drugs, Szasz shows how the present drug war started at the beginning of this century, when the US government first assumed the task of protecting people from patent medicines. By the end of World War I the free market in drugs was but a dim memory. Instead of dwelling on the familiar impracticality and unfairness of drug laws, Szasz demonstrates the deleterious effects of prescription laws, which place people under lifelong medical supervision. The result is that most Americans today prefer a coercive and corrupt command drug economy to a free market in drugs.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Thomas Szasz, Primary Values and Major Contentions written by Thomas Szasz and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The complete list of the works of Thomas S. Szasz": pages 237-253.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
ISBN 13 : 0815650760
Total Pages : 154 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Suicide Prohibition written by Thomas Szasz and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-12 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 antisuicide 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.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
ISBN 13 : 0815650442
Total Pages : 170 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Psychiatry written by Thomas Szasz and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than half a century, Thomas Szasz has devoted much of his career to a radical critique of psychiatry. His latest work, Psychiatry: The Science of Lies, is a culmination of his life’s work: to portray the integral role of deception in the history and practice of psychiatry. Szasz argues that the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness stands in the same relationship to the diagnosis and treatment of bodily illness that the forgery of a painting does to the original masterpiece. Art historians and the legal system seek to distinguish forgeries from originals. Those concerned with medicine, on the other hand—physicians, patients, politicians, health insurance providers, and legal professionals—take the opposite stance when faced with the challenge of distinguishing everyday problems in living from bodily diseases, systematically authenticating nondiseases as diseases. The boundary between disease and nondisease—genuine and imitation, truth and falsehood—thus becomes arbitrary and uncertain. There is neither glory nor profit in correctly demarcating what counts as medical illness and medical healing from what does not. Individuals and families wishing to protect themselves from medically and politically authenticated charlatanry are left to their own intellectual and moral resources to make critical decisions about human dilemmas miscategorized as “mental diseases” and about medicalized responses misidentified as “psychiatric treatments.” Delivering his sophisticated analysis in lucid prose and with a sharp wit, Szasz continues to engage and challenge readers of all backgrounds.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780815607755
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.5X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Meaning of Mind written by Thomas Szasz and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2002-08-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is Szasz's most ambitious work to date. In his best-selling book, The Myth of Mental Illness, he took psychiatry to task for misconstruing human conflict and coping as mental illness. In Our Right to Drugs, he exposed the irrationality and political opportunism that fuels the Drug War. In The Meaning of Mind, he warns that we misconstrue the dialogue within as a problem of consciousness and neuroscience, and do so at our own peril.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780815604600
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Insanity written by Thomas Szasz and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1997-04-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is insanity a myth? Does it exist merely to keep psychiatrists in business? In Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences, Dr. Szasz challenges the way both science and society define insanity; in the process, he helps us better understand this often misunderstood condition. Dr. Szasz presents a carefully crafted account of the insanity concept and shows how it relates to and differs from three closely allied ideas—bodily illness, social deviance, and the sick role.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351503979
Total Pages : 213 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book My Madness Saved Me written by Thomas Szasz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-02 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The vast literature on Virginia Woolf's life, work, and marriage falls into two groups. A large majority is certain that she was mentally ill, and a small minority is equally certain that she was not mentally ill but was misdiagnosed by psychiatrists. In this daring exploration of Woolf's life and work, Thomas Szasz--famed for his radical critique of psychiatric concepts, coercions, and excuses--examines the evidence and rejects both views. Instead, he looks at how Virginia Woolf, as well as her husband Leonard, used the concept of madness and the profession of psychiatry to manage and manipulate their own and each other's lives.Do we explain achievement when we attribute it to the fictitious entity we call ""genius""? Do we explain failure when we attribute it to the fictitious entity we call ""madness""? Or do we deceive ourselves the same way that the person deceives himself when he attributes the easy ignition of hydrogen to its being ""flammable""? Szasz interprets Virginia Woolf's life and work as expressions of her character, and her character as the ""product"" of her free will. He offers this view as a corrective against the prevailing, ostensibly scientific view that attributes both her ""madness"" and her ""genius"" to biological-genetic causes. We tend to attribute exceptional achievement to genius, and exceptional failure to madness. Both, says Szasz, are fictitious entities."