"Fatal Freedom" is an eloquent defense of every individual's right to choose a voluntary death. The author, a renowned psychiatrist, believes that we can speak about suicide calmly and rationally, as he does in this book, and that we can ultimately accept suicide as part of the human condition. By maintaining statutes that determine that voluntary death is not legal, 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 according to Dr. Szasz. His important work asks and points to...
"Fatal Freedom" is an eloquent defense of every individual's right to choose a voluntary death. The author, a renowned psychiatrist, believes that ...
In recent decades, American medicine has become increasingly politicized and politics has become increasingly medicalized. Behaviors previously seen as virtuous or wicked, wise or unwise are now dealt with as healthy or sick--unwanted behaviors to be controlled as if they were health issues. The modern penchant for transforming human problems into diseases and judicial sanctions into treatments, replacing the rule of law with the rule of medical discretion, leads to the creation of a type of government social critic Thomas Szasz calls pharmacracy.
Medicalizing troublesome...
In recent decades, American medicine has become increasingly politicized and politics has become increasingly medicalized. Behaviors previously see...
The libertarian philosophy of freedom is characterized by two fundamental beliefs: the right to be left alone and the duty to leave others alone. Psychiatric practice routinely violates both of these beliefs. It is based on the notion that self-ownership--exemplified by suicide--is a not an inherent right, but a privilege subject to the review of psychiatrists as representatives of society. In Faith in Freedom, Thomas Szasz raises fundamental questions about psychiatric practices that inhibit an individual's right to freedom.
His questions are fundamental. Is suicide an...
The libertarian philosophy of freedom is characterized by two fundamental beliefs: the right to be left alone and the duty to leave others alone. P...
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...
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 ...
Szasz attacks the sacred cows of contemporary American society. In his acerbic and aphoristic style he rails against the hypocrisy and fraudulence of the futile and murderous war against drugs, the sordid and often self-seeking practices of psychotherapy and the atrocities of psychiatry.
Szasz attacks the sacred cows of contemporary American society. In his acerbic and aphoristic style he rails against the hypocrisy and fraudulence of ...
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.
Re-examining psychiatric interventions from a cultural-historical and political-economic perspective, Szasz demonstrates that the main problem that fa...
In this short work, Dr. Szasz takes aim at conventional psychiatry, and at the attendent system of courts, hospitals, and psychiatrists who confine patients against their will. The focal point is a Supreme Court case involving a man forcibly committed to a Florida asylum for 14 years. In refuting the widely held notion that the Donaldson case represents an advancement in the rights of mental patients, Dr. Szasz has put the American legal establishments on trial.
In this short work, Dr. Szasz takes aim at conventional psychiatry, and at the attendent system of courts, hospitals, and psychiatrists who confine pa...
Thomas Szasz argues that the modern penchant for transforming human problems into diseases and judicial sanctions into treatments, replacing the rule of law with the rule of medical discretion, leads to a type of government he calls pharmacracy, eroding personal freedom and dignity.
Thomas Szasz argues that the modern penchant for transforming human problems into diseases and judicial sanctions into treatments, replacing the rule ...
Thomas Szasz demonstrates the futility of analysing the mind as a collection of brain functions. In his previous publication 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. Here, he warns that we misconstrue the dialogue within as a problem of consciousness and neuroscience and do so at our peril.
Thomas Szasz demonstrates the futility of analysing the mind as a collection of brain functions. In his previous publication The Myth of Mental Illnes...
Defining "medicalization" as the perception of nonmedical conditions as medical problems and nondiseases as diseases, Thomas Szasz has devoted much of his career to exposing the dangers of "medicalizing" the conditions of some who simply refuse to conform to society's expectations. Szasz argues that modern psychiatry's tireless ambition to explain the human condition has led to the treatment of life's difficulties and oddities as clinical illnesses rather than as humanity revealed in its fullness. This collection of impassioned essays, published between 1973 and 2006, chronicles the author's...
Defining "medicalization" as the perception of nonmedical conditions as medical problems and nondiseases as diseases, Thomas Szasz has devoted much of...
