Bibliography

  • "The Myth of Mental Illness", Thomas Szasz, 1961.
  • "The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement", Thomas Szasz, 1970.
  • "Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry", Thomas Szasz, 1976.
  • "Anti-Freud - Karl Kraus' Criticisms of Psychiatry", Thomas Szasz, 1976.
  • "The Theology of Medicine", Thomas Szasz, 1977.
  • "The Myth of Psychotherapy", Thomas Szasz, 1978.
  • "Insanity - the Idea and its Consequences", Thomas Szasz, 1987.
  • "Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market", Thomas Szasz, 1992.
  • "The Meaning of Mind: Language, Morality and Neuroscience", Thomas Szasz, 1996.
  • "Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide", Thomas Szasz, 1999.
  • "Faith in Freedom", Thomas Szasz, 2004
  • "The Medicalisation of Everyday Life", Essays by Thomas Szasz, 2007.
  • "Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry", Thomas Szasz, 2007.
  • "Psychiatry: the Science of Lies", Thomas Szasz, 2008.
  • "Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared", Thomas Szasz, 2009.
  • "Suicide Prohibition: The Shame of Medicine", Thomas Szasz, 2011.
  • "Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good", James Davies, 2013.

Recovering From Psychiatry



www.recoveringfrompsychiatry.com

"Mental Illness" in "A Dictionary of Green Ideas" (1988).

Mental Illness
[c.1950]
A creation of professional psychiatrists from the mid-nineteenth century onwards to explain rebellious or "anti-social" behaviour, usually called "hysteria" until the 1950s and thought of as a primarily female "disorder". In the last twenty years many people have questioned the legitimacy of the label of mental illness, and have criticized the way that those given the label are treated as second-class human beings.
Green thinkers prefer to take mental health or mental wellness as their starting-point, rather than framing the issue within the conventional and limiting terms of mental illness, disease or handicap. Some humanistic psychologists use the term "mental distress": "Humanistic psychology does not attach very much importance to diagnostic categories, and does not see mental distress as a medical problem" (John Rowan, 1976).
Yet health care professionals, their patients and the public have invested so much in believing that mental illness does exist that a person's mind and body frequently oblige by presenting very convincing symptoms, further confusing the question of whether or not there is such a thing as mental illness.
"The notion of a person "having a mental illness" is scientifically crippling. It provides professional assent to a popular rationalization, namely, that problems in living experienced and expressed in terms of so-called psychiatric symptoms are basically similar to bodily diseases. Moreover, the concept of mental illness also undermines the principle of personal responsibility, the ground on which all free political institutions rest. For the individual, the notion of mental illness precludes and inquiring attitude towards his [or her] conflicts which his [or her] symptoms at once conceal and reveal. For a society, it precludes regarding individuals as responsible persons and invites, instead, treating them as irresponsible patients." (Thomas Szasz, 1962).
"We must face the fact that much of what is called "mental illness" by the oppressive society is healthy and at least semi-rational rebellion against conformity, against submission to, or co-operation with, oppression. The "mental health systems" in our present societies are almost entirely instruments of oppression in spite of the good intentions and the basic humanness of the practitioners who act out their roles in the machinery. Mental health oppression is invoked and used to force submission, to enforce conformity, and to imprison and destroy rebels and non-conformists." (Harvey Jackins, 1983).
And of course it is still women who suffer the most, which is not unconnected with the fact that 86% of all US psychiatrists are men: "In the mental health field, as in most other arenas of social life, it is largely men who have the power to define reality - to name the problem....the typical male Expert is likely to construe the statistics that women are psychologically sicker than men. The numbers may be taken as evidence of the problem of female mental illness. But if we look closer, this way of defining the problem is itself part of the problem. For statistics also show that male doctors will diagnose women as neurotic or psychotic  twice as frequently as they do men with the same symptoms: Man as Expert simply sees women quite differently than he sees men." (Miriam Greenspan, 1983).

Entry in "A DICTIONARY OF GREEN IDEAS", JOHN BUTTON, 1988.

About Me

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I am an amateur FILOSOFER. (I am not really a sofa). I dropped out of Cambridge University though I got an "S" grade in the entrance examination. I eventually received a 1st class Bachelors degree elsewhere. I received A.H.R.B. funding to pursue postgraduate study, but did not do so. Please enjoy my blogs. To parafrase Orwell, I am trying to make political blogging into an art. My intellectual heroes are Kenan Malik, Thomas Szasz and Noam Chomsky. I have made some mistakes in my life - and I would like to apologize wholeheartedly and from the depths of my cushions for any problems I may have caused and may be causing for anyone anywhere.