Thomas S Szasz

Author : Thomas S. Szasz
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 436 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2011-07-12
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780062104748

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The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas S. Szasz Pdf

“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 : Jeffrey A. Schaler,Henry Zvi Lothane,Richard E. Vatz
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2017-09-08
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781351295024

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Thomas S. Szasz by Jeffrey A. Schaler,Henry Zvi Lothane,Richard E. Vatz Pdf

As it entered the 1960s, American institutional psychiatry was thriving, with a high percentage of medical students choosing the field. But after Thomas S. Szasz published his masterwork in 1961, The Myth of Mental Illness, the psychiatric world was thrown into chaos. Szasz enlightened the world about what he called the “myth of mental illness.” His point was not that no one is mentally ill, or that people labeled as mentally ill do not exist. Instead he believed that diagnosing people as mentally ill was inconsistent with the rules governing pathology and the classification of disease. He asserted that the diagnosis of mental illness is a type of social control, not medical science. The editors were uniquely close to Szasz, and here they gather, for the first time, a group of their peers—experts on psychiatry, psychology, rhetoric, and semiotics—to elucidate Szasz’s body of work. Thomas S. Szasz: The Man and His Ideas examines his work and legacy, including new material on the man himself and the seeds he planted. They discuss Szasz’s impact on their thinking about the distinction between physical and mental illness, addiction, the insanity plea, schizophrenia, and implications for individual freedom and responsibility. This important volume offers insight into and understanding of a man whose ideas were far beyond his time.

Author : C. V. Haldipur,James L. Knoll IV,Eric v. d. Luft
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2019-01-24
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780192543219

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Thomas Szasz by C. V. Haldipur,James L. Knoll IV,Eric v. d. Luft Pdf

Thomas Szasz wrote over thirty books and several hundred articles, replete with mordant criticism of psychiatry, in both scientific and popular periodicals. His works made him arguably one of the world's most recognized psychiatrists, albeit one of the most controversial. These writings have been translated into several languages and have earned him a worldwide following. Szasz was a man of towering intellect, sweeping historical knowledge, and deep-rooted, mostly libertarian, philosophical beliefs. He wrote with a lucid and acerbic wit, but usually in a way that is accessible to general readers. His books cautioned against the indiscriminate power of psychiatry in courts and in society, and against the apparent rush to medicalize all human folly. They have spawned an eponymous ideology that has influenced, to various degrees, laws relating to mental health in several countries and states. This book critically examines the legacy of Thomas Szasz - a man who challenged the very concept of mental illness and questioned several practices of psychiatrists. The book surveys his many contributions including those in psychoanalysis, which are very often overlooked by his critics. While admiring his seminal contribution to the debate, the book will also point to some of his assertions that merit closer scrutiny. Contributors to the book are drawn from various disciplines, including Psychiatry, Philosophy and Law; and are from various countries including the United States, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Some contributors knew Thomas Szasz personally and spent many hours with him discussing issues he raised in his books and articles. The book will be fascinating reading for anyone interested in matters of mental health, human rights, and ethics.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 170 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2019-02-28
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780815650447

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Psychiatry by Thomas Szasz Pdf

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 : Unknown
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 1983
Category : Medical
ISBN : UOM:39015006246709

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Thomas Szasz, Primary Values and Major Contentions by Thomas Szasz Pdf

"The complete list of the works of Thomas S. Szasz": pages 237-253.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 1989-10-01
Category : Law
ISBN : 0815602421

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Law, Liberty and Psychiatry by Thomas Szasz Pdf

1 copy located in CIRCULATION.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 1991-04-01
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0815602561

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Ideology and Insanity by Thomas Szasz Pdf

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.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Promtheus
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 1984
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0879752424

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The Therapeutic State by Thomas Szasz Pdf

Chiefly reprints of articles originally published 1965-1983. Includes bibliographies and index.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 204 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2002-08-01
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0815607555

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Fatal Freedom by Thomas Szasz Pdf

Fatal Freedom is an eloquent defense of every individual’s right to choose F a voluntary death. By maintaining statutes that determine that voluntary death is not legal, Thomas Szasz believes that our society is forfeiting one of its basic freedoms and causing the psychiatric medical establishment to treat individuals in a manner that is disturbingly inhumane. Society’s penchant for defining behavior it terms objectionable as a dis­ease has created a psychiatric establishment that exerts far too much influ­ence over how and when we choose to die. In a compelling argument that clearly and intelligently addresses one of the most significant ethical issues of our time, Szasz compares suicide to other practices that historically began as sins, became crimes, and now arc seen as mental illnesses.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2015-02-01
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780815603139

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The Myth of Psychotherapy by Thomas Szasz Pdf

This intriguing book undercuts everything you thought you knew about psychotherapy.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 212 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 1990-02-01
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0815602472

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Anti-Freud by Thomas Szasz Pdf

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 1998-04-01
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0815605110

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Psychiatric Slavery by Thomas Szasz Pdf

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.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Transaction Publishers
Page : 295 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2011-12-31
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781412808958

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Coercion as Cure by Thomas Szasz Pdf

Understanding the history of psychiatry requires an accurate view of its function and purpose. In this provocative new study, Szasz challenges conventional beliefs about psychiatry. He asserts that, in fact, psychiatrists are not concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of bona fide illnesses. Psychiatric tradition, social expectation, and the law make it clear that coercion is the profession's determining characteristic. Psychiatrists may "diagnose" or "treat" people without their consent or even against their clearly expressed wishes, and these involuntary psychiatric interventions are as different as are sexual relations between consenting adults and the sexual violence we call "rape." But the point is not merely the difference between coerced and consensual psychiatry, but to contrast them. The term "psychiatry" ought to be applied to one or the other, but not both. As long as psychiatrists and society refuse to recognize this, there can be no real psychiatric historiography. The coercive character of psychiatry was more apparent in the past than it is now. Then, insanity was synonymous with unfitness for liberty. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a new type of psychiatric relationship developed, when people experiencing so-called "nervous symptoms," sought help. This led to a distinction between two kinds of mental diseases: neuroses and psychoses. Persons who complained about their own behavior were classified as neurotic, whereas persons about whose behavior others complained were classified as psychotic. The legal, medical, psychiatric, and social denial of this simple distinction and its far-reaching implications undergirds the house of cards that is modern psychiatry. Coercion as Cure is the most important book by Szasz since his landmark The Myth of Mental Illness.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 1988-04-01
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0815602243

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Schizophrenia by Thomas Szasz Pdf

First published in 1976, Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry examines the concept of schizophrenia and the origins of its classification as a disease. Szasz convincing argues that rather than a medical diagnosis, the word schizophrenia is a symbol employed by psychiatrists as a means of control.

Author : Thomas Szasz
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2003-10-01
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0815607687

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Ceremonial Chemistry by Thomas Szasz Pdf

Responding to the controversy surrounding drug use and drug criminalization, Thomas Szasz suggests that the "therapeutic state" has overstepped its bounds in labeling certain drugs as "dangerous" substances and incarcerating drug "addicts" in order to cure them. Szasz shows that such policies scapegoat certain drugs as well as the persons who sell, buy, or use them; and 'misleadingly pathologize the "drug problem" by defining disapproved drug use as "disease" and efforts to change the behavior as "treatment." Readers will find in Szasz's arguments a cogent and committed response to a worldwide debate.