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Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

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The idea that those in our society whose beliefs differ from the norm must be drugged and/or imprisoned in the name of compassion is so widely accepted that it is rarely challenged. If Jesus Christ were alive today, he would have been arrested for disorderly conduct at the temple, given a court ordered psychiatric evaluation, diagnosed with irritable mania/Bi-Polar disorder and drugged into a near comatose stupor until he renounced his beliefs and conformed to the beliefs of those in power (pharisees.)
The idea that individuals who have committed no crime can be stripped of their civil rights on the word of a single medical opinion is apalling considering that some patients have received as many as 50 different psychiatric diagnosis, many contradictary.
Institutionalization and forced medication with dangerous psychoactive drugs constitutes assault and has lead to death and disability. It is a means of social control. It is often little more than chemical assault by people in positions of power against people without power. Often abused women were locked in a Mental Hospital for life on the word of an abusive husband or resentful/dishonest family member. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was not recognized as a disorder until the 1970's. Prior to that it was often mistaken for Paranoid Schizophrenia or Psychosis and treated with insulin/electro shock or lobotomy rather than traditional psychotherapy turning Post Traumatic Stress survivors into the walking dead.
And all this is in the name of compassion. Certainly this is cruel and abusive yet it continues today. This book exposes what modern psychiatry wants to conceal: the brutal, dehumanizing power of psychiatry as a means of social control.

Capitalism is the hallmark of the American economy. Americans embrace the notion of producing and distributing goods and services in a free market, which undergoes minimal government regulation. This type of economic trade works for and satisfies most people in a democratic society, particularly those with adequate financial stability. For some unfortunate individuals, however, the market is not entirely "free," and government regulation is all but minimal. These individuals are forced to be consumers of government-provided goods and services against their will. Although those found guilty of criminal acts are deprived of liberty, denied certain legal rights, and subjected to government coercion, these hapless individuals are not criminals. In most instances, these individuals have neither performed criminal acts, posed as threats to anyone or anything, nor been accused of any wrongdoing per se. The only accusation made against these individuals is that they are "insane;" furthermore, coercing these individuals to adhere to government regulation is justifiable in a court of law.

American society and economy has a deleterious system of subjecting insane, or "mentally ill," individuals to psychiatric control. This theme pervades Thomas Szasz's book, Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of America's Unwanted. According to Szasz, there exists an age-old process of storing and coercing society's unwanted individuals (viz., indigents, debtors, epileptics, children, homeless individuals, and the mentally ill).

The beginning of this process can be traced back to the early 17th-century English Poor Laws, which were enacted to punish economically unproductive indigents. Between then and now, debtors, or insolvents, were contractually bound to serve time in debtor's prisons; epileptics were medicated (i.e., given neuroleptic, or antipsychotic, drugs), sterilized, and stored in colonies; troublesome children were given arbitrary psychiatric diagnoses and sentenced to psychiatric hospitals, or "madhouses;" and homeless individuals were housed in economically lucrative, government-provided domiciles. As for the mentally ill, they were originally placed in asylums and madhouses (i.e., were institutionalized) under the coercion of a psychiatrist, and as a result of an anti-psychiatric movement and Szasz himself, they are currently coerced into deinstitutionalization and ingestion of psychiatric mediation.

While many of these acts may appear to be compassionate and altruistic methods performed by self-righteous mental health professionals in order to help or correct the "less fortunate," Szasz asserts that this facade is far from the truth. These motives underlying these acts are often economic. For example, the frequency of psychiatric diagnoses in America is highly influenced and regulated by health insurance companies and government-funded programs such as Medicaid and Medicare. Another popular motive for psychiatric institutionalization derived from the phenomenon of caregivers no longer wanting to care for their mentally ill family members. These caregivers basically used the system to pawn off unwanted, embarrassing, and/or interfering friends and relatives to well-paid, government-employed psychiatrists.

Psychiatric institutionalization was masked as a system using medicine to treat "real" illness. Psychiatry attempted to mirror and mimic medicine by making absurd claims about the success and recovery rate of their often iatrogenic procedures. Some of these procedures include the infamous lobotomy, electric shock, the dissemination of neuroleptic drugs (historically for epileptics and often inducing tardive dyskinesia), and insulin shock and coma. Additionally, psychiatric patients were belittled, deprived of dignity through their role in the therapist-patient relationship, and institutionalized, becoming dependent on the institution for survival. Following the institutionalization era, patients were then deinstitutionalized (i.e., funneled out of the hospitals into nursing homes, halfway houses, etc.).

Psychiatric deinstitutionalization was justified by spurious claims that medications, such as chlorpromazine (marketed as Thorazine), were effective remedies. In actuality, psychiatric patients were forced from their "homes" (i.e., hospitals), heavily sedated, and sent to live in the streets. Currently, those perceived as mentally ill can be coerced into psychological examination and medication.

Szasz illustrates the pitfalls of psychiatric coercion and enlightens the reader to the economic policy and cruelty underlying these seemingly benevolent interventions (hence Cruel Compassion). He not only believes that these interventions are pejorative, which is ironically antagonistic to the intention, but also that mental illness is a myth (i.e., fictitious) with psychiatric diagnoses serving as medical metaphors. Additionally, he strongly recommends and supports the notion of abolishing all involuntary, coercive psychiatric procedures. Szasz states, "All involuntary psychiatric interventions should be outlawed" (p. 68), and, "I oppose psychiatric coercion, period" (p. 81).

Along with abolishing psychiatric control, another motif that pervades Szasz's book relates to his emphasis on freedom and personal responsibility. There exists a current trend in society to avoid responsibility for troublesome or abnormal behavior, placing the blame on situations (viz., "diseases") and/or other people for these actions. This phenomenon exemplifies the social-psychological concept of self-serving bias (Fincham & Hewstone, 2001). According to Szasz, criminal acts should be treated as such (regardless of psychological condition), and people should accept responsibility for their behavior. This notion closely parallels Rollo May's existentialism philosophy, which is grounded on the assumption that people are free and are responsible for their own choices (Corey, 2001).

While Szasz's rationale is well presented, one criticism is his inability to repudiate his critics. Those in opposition to Szasz's beliefs and views, such as Howard Sudak and Karl Menninger, are cited in his book. They advocate re-institutionalization by illustrating the negative impacts of deinstitutionalization. For instance, they blame deinstitutionalization for the large proportion of mentally ill that are homeless and claim that many psychiatric patients have not only "benefited" but also survived due to coercive methods of prescribing medication. While Szasz redundantly reiterates his liberal ideology (i.e., the fact that he disapproves of any type of psychiatric coercion), his rebuttals avoid the content of such criticisms. The only convincing evidence he supplies is a letter written by one of his former adversaries, Karl Menninger, who "acknowledged that perhaps I [Szasz] was right, after all" (p. 201).

The major purpose of this book is to enlighten the reader to the baneful process of psychiatric control. Blinded by false perceptions and beliefs of compassion and democracy, society has labeled misbehavior as a medical disorder and has given the state the power to therapeutically coerce. This book is intended for a diverse audience including students and those who participate in the caring professions, particularly clinicians, managers, politicians, and policymakers. Those wanting a sobering look into psychiatric treatment have found the right book.

Szasz is insightful into the ideas of mental illness and the use of such a term. Does a value judgement such as "mentally ill" or "sane" belong to the field of medicine? Humanity is now noticing the unstable polarity which is the essence to such a judgement, but in this book Szasz discusses the dilemma of what to do when people still exhibit behavior which we want to fix. How does one heal? And isn't healing diseases part of medicine? Labels such as mentally ill are simply excuses to take away another person's free will in order to try to help them. Yes, many times one does help another, but labelling that person as "wrong" or ill is not the right way to remedy a situation. In this book Szasz approaches the ides of autonomy of the individual under a system which claims to be a medical, scientific field, but is a human intitution treating other humans as if they were not humans.

ALL OF SZASZ WORK IS REALLY WUNDERBAR... I GOT THE CHANCE TO READ SOME OF THESE BOOKS THEY ALL ARE SOMETHING.

THESE BOOKS OPEN YOUR MIND... TO REALITY THEY ARE DOING WITH THE
SKINNER BOX AND ELSE.THEY ARE ALL FALSE TEACHERS,WE DO NOT HAVE TOBE ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL.THE THING THAT I DO NOT UNDERSTAND UNDERSTANDING, THAT THEY BELIEVE THEY HAVE THE ONLY TRUE,IF WE TALK WITH OTHER POSSIBILITIES WE ARE WRONGDOING,SATAN,DEVIL, THAT IS JUST SEMANTICS THAT THEY USE TO BREAK YOUR INNERSELF TO THESE F.... NERROWMINDED SOULLESS ONES,BUT THAT IS JUST A DEEP TRANCE ONE DAY TIME TO WAKEUP.

It is not surprising that Szasz' business model is built around denying the existence of mental illnesses and making money out of those ignorant of the problems and torture the mentally sick undergo. Anyone who truly understands a mentally ill friend or relative would instantly disagree with Szasz. Szasz has no convincing answers for why mental illnesses run in families? Why does Lithium (and/or several other drugs) restore a degree of normalcy in those affected by bipolar disorder? While the individual is still responsible for his actions, helping him lead a normal life is the least amount of compassion expected from the society.

If Thomas Szasz does not want public funds spent to take care of the mentally ill, the homeless and subsatnce abusers, he has every right to say so. What I objects to is his philosophical dogma which denies the existence of mental illness and addiction a priori. His pat answer is always just to leave everyone alone to live their lives as they please and accept "responsibility" for their actions. Even thogh he is supposed to be a medical doctor, he ignores a fact that anyone who has taken a few biology classes should know: The brain is the organ that governs behavior!!!!! When someting goes wrong with the brain, strange and/or self-destructive behavior may occur. Szasz sees the actions of the mentally ill as a sign of weak character, but by definition, behavior caused by mental illness CONTRASTS with the idividual's usual behavior. For instance, a usually active and sociable teenage girl becomes overwealmed by self hatred and uncontrolable sorrow. She locks herself in her room and is contemplating swollowing a bottle of sleeping pills. Her feelings and behavior are just as much of a mystery to her as they are to others, but she cannot control them. What to do? Just let her die? Defend her "right" to do anything she "wants"--even if she is the victim of a brain disease that could be corrected with medication? Just let her die and say "well, if some people can't cut the mustard, we're better off without them. Let the unfit die out." This seems to be what Szasz would do, given his philosophy that society owes nothing to its troubled members. And I for one feel that this philosophy is monstrous. What if someone with Alsheimer's wanders into a snow storm wearing nothing but a bathrobe? Would Szasz let him die too, or are some people more worthy of treatment and preservation than others? Some brain disease are labeled as "Psychiatric" and others as "Neurological." Szasz has made a co! mpletely arbitrary decision to deny the existence of any disease that has been placed in the former category. If epilepsy had been labeled as a psychiatric condition by the medical establishment, he would be compelled by his philosophy to deny its existence and say that people have siezures because they are irresponsible and just seeking attention. Even though Dr. Szasz sets up and supports this arbitrary distintion, mainstream modern science does not. Psychiatry and neurology are converging and may one day merge. After all, they are both medical specialties dealing with the same organ. With the knowledge of behavior and brain chemistry that we are rapidly gaining, we may someday eliminate suicide, psychosis and addiction from our world (or at least radically reduce their occurance and the harm they cause). This hope is based on empirical knowlege and true compassion for "society's unwanted."