Szasz Under Fire: A Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics

Front Cover
Jeffrey A. Schaler
Open Court Publishing, 2004 - Law - 450 pages
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.
 

Contents

An Autobiographical Sketch by Thomas Szasz
1
The Myth of Mental Illness
29
Thomas Szaszs
57
Do Humans
119
On Thomas Szasz the Meaning of Mental
139
Prescribed Addiction
179
The Legitimacy of the Defense of Insanity
199
Pharmacracy or Phantom?
225
The Disorder Mental
253
What Kind of Freedom? Szaszs Misleading
277
Sideshow? Schizophrenia as Construed
301
Moving Beyond the Myth of Mental Illness
327
A Methodological
365
Documents from the Szasz Affair
393
Index
431
Copyright

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