[shrinkermd]

No educated person interested in mental health and the law can afford not to understand Dr. Szas's arguments.

That said, it is also important to understand that troubled and troubling behavior have multi-causal referents as well as goals. In some ways Dr. Szas brought goal seeking back into a discussion in psychiatry. Simply equating troubled and troubling behavior as a manifestation of "mental illness" restricts understanding and treatment.

It is also important to remember we have causal chains and can intereact with an available treatment: this does imply a cause. For example, if you are highly stressed and someone gives you a minor sedative it does not mean you have a biological lesion requiring chemicals. Similarly, many other disorders are just labeled as "diseases" or "syndromes" or "disorders" simply on the basis of who treats and with what.

I always found Dr. Szas to be precise and logical in his thinking assuming his unstated assumptions. He was not a "hail fellow well met" and part of his problem is he implied blanket condemnation of people who were simply trying to do what they thought was best.

I doubt if Dr. Szas will be forgotten and Fuller Torrey's scorn is ill advised.

[Pharmboy]

I read Szasz back in the 70s. He was an idiot back then and remains so now. As imprecise as psychiatry is, his nihilism improves nothing. I will never respect Upstate Med Center because of Szasz's remaining on the staff...

[FreePaul]

Apparently psychiatry is composed of some of the worst kind of prostitutes. Any time there is a trial where mental condition is in question there is no problem finding experts who will, for a large fee, take either side. Seems that a lot of cases are decided by which "expert" is the best liar. Of course many cases are decided when one side can't afford the "care" of one of the industries "experts."

[Fairview]

We have little difficulty accepting that the subtle biochemistry f the liver might malfunction, that the interplay of chemicals in lung tissue or heart might be imperfect; why should it be impossible to believe, as some do, that the even more complex reactions of neurochemistry might go awry? The literature on this is vast.

[Billthedrill]

BTT - a fascinating study. It should be noted that it was not only Szasz who challenged the field of psychiatry at that time in history - the same year as his Myth Of Mental Illness was published, Michel Foucault published Madness and Civilization, a historical review of the abuses associated with the sociological aspects of mental illness. Foucault is, of course, an icon these days and Szasz a virtual outcast.

The two approaches couldn't be more different but in one important aspect they do resemble one another - each was an open challenge to the existing institution of medical learning. (It is, incidentally, the only one of Foucault's works with which I have a passing sympathy. Sartre despised it.) But Szasz was attempting his revolt from within the very institution he was challenging; Foucault was approaching it from the outside, which is probably why he was not so readily silenced.

As a layman to the field I can only speculate but it seems to me that in the four and half decades since Szasz's work a certain corpus of data has developed indicating a demonstrable physiological basis for at least some of what was broadly termed "mental illnesses." I am ignorant of how Szasz regards that and would be grateful to be informed.

[true_blue_texican]

bfwis

Bump For When I'm Sober

[Tamerlane]

There may still be a little truth in the words of Thomas Szasz. Do not the mental instutions remain full? Are not many of the new mental illnesses being "discovered" by drug companies to fit their their new pharmacutical finds?

[IronJack]

A myth is not a word properly used that refers to something that doesn’t exist. It refers to a kind of collective reasoning that people make;

I think the word he was looking for was "mythos." "Myth" doesn't quite do the duty he's assigned it.

[IronJack]

I read Harper and Ellis, Fritz Perls, and a host of Skinnerian stuff a few decades ago. In the field of psychotherapy, I think they all offer something. And I don't think any one school is complete by itself.

Then there's the fortune-cookie "self-help" fads of mind-mending: est, "I'm Okay/You're Okay," "Men Are From Mars," etc.. Superficial, trendy, like Adkins for the brain.

[Dajjal]

BTTT