Anti-psychiatrist, author of:

• Our Right to Drugs
• The Myth of Mental Illness

Dr Szasz holds that we have substituted scientism for morality and allowed a category error to permeate our thinking about mental illnesses and other 'diseases' such as drug addiction, alcoholism, anorexia and obesity.

He sees their current 'pathological' status as the inevitable result of a society that is unprepared to accept the hard work involved in personal responsibility.

Szasz also wrote "Ceremonial Chemistry, The ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers."

In this book, the author tries to identify the actual occurrences that constitute our so-called drug problem.

He also thinks that "the conceptual realm and logical class into which these phenomena belongs are religion and politics", that "the ritual persecution of these pharmacological and human agents must be seen against the historical backdrop of the ritual persecution of other scapegoats, such as witches, Jews and madmen."

Finally, Szasz says that he wants to "identify the moral and legal implications of the view that using and avoiding drugs are not matters of health and disease but matters of god and evil; that, in other words, drug abuse is not a regretable medical disease but a repudiated religious observance."

This is one of my favorite authors, as his thoughts are provoking and make me wonder about what kind of world are we living in...

For similar approaches see the Michael Foucault node.

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From the preface of "Ceremonial Chemistry, The ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers." 1985 © by Thomas Szasz, Learning Publications Inc.

Szasz's ire is not reserved merely for those who persecute drug addicts or those with eating disorders. As a matter of fact, he goes even further, boldly drawing a link between the entire concept of mental health to the concept of witchcraft.

In The Myth of Mental Illness, claims that all invocations of "mental health" or "mental illness" are deeply flawed conceptually, and have the same epistemic status as witchcraft. In the Middle Ages, people believed that heresy was harmful to society, and that, for the benefit of the heretic, the Church was authorised to intervene and extract a recantation, which was needed to save the person's soul. Likewise, today, people believe that eccentricity and deviance are harmful to society, and that, for the benefit of the alienated, the State is authorised to intervene and "treat" the unwilling "patient" with drugs, brainwashing, and until quite recently, electroshock therapy and forced sterilization.

In The Manufacture of Madness, Szasz takes up this theme again, arguing further that, not only are the concepts involved ("witchcraft" and "insanity") fallacious in exactly the same ways, both were also invented to serve the exact same purpose, the latter arising as the former became impractical. This book is strongly directed against the APA and their party line. Traditional humanist rhetoric in the discipline of psychology, spearheaded by the American Psychology Association, states that doctors "discovered" that witches weren't really evil, but were "actually" insane. Szasz fiercely criticises this received opinion as propaganda -- he says that they locked up deviants back then, and we lock them up now, and it's for the exact same reasons: deviants make "normal" people feel afraid. After all, "mental illness" is considered sufficient grounds to suspend two of our most basic legal rights, due process and informed consent. Szasz's invective is clear; consider the opening lines of The Manufacture of Madness:

In the past, most people believed in sorcery, sympathetic magic, and witchcraft. Men have a powerful need to perceive the causes of natural disasters, epidemics, personal misfortunes, and death. Magic and witchcraft supply a primitive theory for explaining such occurrences, and appropriate methods for coping with them.

The behavior of persons whose conduct differs from that of their fellows -- either by falling below the standards of the group or by surpassing them -- constitutes a similar mystery and threat; the notions of demonic possession and madness supply a primitive theory for explaining such occurrences and appropriate methods for coping with them. (3)

Although the perceptions which motivate Thomas Szasz are similar to those which motivated Foucault to write his first book Madness and Civilization, Szasz's writing style relies on a number of forms Foucault was reluctant to use. Foucault prefered to show the story and let the consequences speak for themselves, thereby insinuating his position. In the early phase of his career in which he wrote Madness and Civilization, he also prefered not to talk about emotions like "pride" or "fear" that would help put the incarceratory practices into perspective. As a result, Foucault's work is ambiguous and difficult to make heads or tails of. Szasz, however, makes clear his disdain for this social cowardice; he describes it as "immoral," a word that Foucault (like myself) prefers to avoid -- but the sentiment is clearly the same. On this matter, Szasz is definitely the better scholar and the better writer.

The flipside of this better writing style is that the "Establishment," while content to let the baroque writings of Foucault slide under their radar, have a special place in Hell reserved for Szasz. In a footnote early in The Manufacture of Madness, Szasz quotes his colleague Frederick G. Glaser: "The question will inevitably be raised whether sanctions of some form ought to be taken against Dr. Szasz, not only because of the content of his views but because of the manner in which he presents them. He has not chosen to limit his discussion to professional circles, as his magazine article, not the first that he has written, testifies." ("The dichotomy game: A further consideraiton of the writings of Dr. Thomas Szasz," American Journal of Psychiatry, 121, May 1965; p1073 -- quoted in Szasz, 19) The article to which Dr Glaser refers was published in Harper's.

Glaser's comments, which practically reek with Inquisitorial undertones of censorship and persecution, reflect the discomfort which Szasz inspires in psychiatrists whose job it is to find "sick" people and "help" them -- whether the "patient" wants that help or not. He wants to force people to recognise the hypocricy of their notions of "normal" and "abnormal."

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In the Middle Ages, the Church endorsed a belief in witchcraft. To deny the existence of witches, therefore, was a form of heresy and therefore a sign of witchcraft. Unfortunately, today I have discovered that in our modern age, to deny the existence of mental illness is taken as a sign of madness, deserving censorship and "disagreement" of the paternalistic sort.

Let this serve as a lesson for us.

The problem here is the underlying assumption that there is no such thing as morality. Not only is this unproven, but patently false. While I accept that anything outside of the mythos or logos of a society may be seen as insane, that in no way undermine's a society's value set as it seeks to better itself, and the individuals within it. Nowadays the emphasis is on stopping people who are going to harm themselves, or harm others by behaviour patterns and expressions that are inconsistent within the framework of their existence.

For example, when a priest starts to blaspheme and still claim that he or she loves God, there is obviously a contradiction. (We could talk a lot here about politicians, but we won't for the sake of brevity.) Or perhaps we should consider those people who start to eat their own faeces, or who repeatedly try to commit suicide, or self-mutilation, or who are homicidal, or have chemical imbalances in the brain. These people are insane. They harm themselves, and they harm others, if not directly, then by debasing the image of a dignified humanity that we all aspire to. Thomas Szasz's assertions to the contrary, while thought provoking, are based on a reactionary stance which, if followed through would dissemble the basis of society's responsibility to the individual.

Namely that not only do I have a duty to protect myself from you, but also to protect you from others, and also to protect you from yourself. All of these three scenarios limit freedom, but the freedom they restrict comes at the price of justice. People who are high on drugs cannot drive buses, or be trusted to be doctors, nor can they work. They still need to be fed and clothed, and they draw resources from the rest of us. While someone who is disabled has a right to all that we can do for them, I do not see how we can justify harming ourselves and society for personal pleasure.

But I digress, this node is about Madness, the definitions of madness that are bandied about like tennis balls, and all the trendy new liberal ideas that abolish 'society', personal conscience, and personal responsibility, not to mention all the right wing ideas that would have us locked away in our homes with guns and watching each other like hawks to see what everyone was upto. Madness isn't a theory, it is real. When a mind degrades past the point of rational thought, you are no longer looking at a human being, but an animal. Even animals must be treated kindly, and who knows, enough semblance of humanity might remain and gradually re-assert itself so that the personal will become whole again. But this is something that needs treatment, it needs care, and it also needs recognition. We can't just label it as "cool man, this guy's tripping...!" and absolve ourselves of the fact that he is beating his head off the ground until blood is gushing by the fact that we call it something other than insanity.

It is real.