The Meaning of Mind [Hardcover]

Thomas Szasz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1996 | ISBN-10: 0275956032 | ISBN-13: 978-0275956035

In The Meaning of Mind, Thomas Szasz argues that only as a verb does the word "mind" mean something in the real world, namely, attending or heeding. Minding is the ability to pay attention and adapt to one's environment by using language to communicate with others and oneself. Viewing the "mind" as a potentially infinite variety of self-conversations is the key that unlocks many of the mysteries we associate with this concept. Modern neuroscience is a misdirected effort to explain "mind" in terms of brain functions. The claims and conclusions of the diverse academics and scientists who engage in this enterprise undermine the concepts of moral agency and personal responsibility. Szasz shows that the cognitive function of speech is to enable us to talk not only to others but to ourselves (in short, to be our own interlocutor), and that the view that mind is brain--embraced by both the scientific community and the popular press--is not an empirical finding but a rhetorical ruse concealing humanity's unceasing struggle to control persons by controlling the vocabulary. The discourse of brain-mind, unlike the discourse of man as moral agent, protects people from the dilemmas intrinsic to holding themselves responsible for their own actions and holding others responsible for theirs. Because we live in an age blessed by the fruits of materialist science, reductionist explanations of the relationship between brain and mind are more popular today than ever, making this book an indispensible addition to the seemingly recondite debate about, simply, who we are.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With The Myth of Mental Illness (1961), Szasz began his crusade against forced commitment to mental institutions, enforced psychotropic medication and the official definition, indeed the very concept, of schizophrenia. He has published more than 20 books since then, expounding his controversial theories. Here, he takes issue with theorists such as John Searle, for whom consciousness is a physical entity and who believes the mind is the brain. For Szasz, the mind is minding: observing one's environment, formulating observations that are then articulated with others and with oneself. Thus self-conversation is normal and hearing voices a universal phenomenon. So-called schizophrenics practice "disavowed" self-conversation, attributing to others their internal conversation. According to Szasz, psychiatrists and neuroscientists have conspired to produce an erosion of personal responsibility, making people unaccountable for their thoughts and actions. He himself lays the blame for "illness" squarely on the afflicted person. Szasz is an original thinker whose theories, though open to challenge, are daring and profound. His new book should appeal not only to those interested in mental illness but to anyone caught up in the ongoing debate about the origin and nature of mind.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Emeritus professor of psychiatry and a prolific and controversial author (The Myth of Mental Illness, 1974; Our Right to Drugs, Praeger, 1991), Szasz here addresses the concept of mind with his customary fervor. Clear, provocative, and based on broad reading and experience, the book seems to lose some of its initial force as the argument, somewhat fragmented, concludes with the assertion of "the conceptual primacy of the person as moral agent." Szasz upholds this primacy against its reduction to the mind by psychiatry, to the soul by religion, or to the body by neuroscience. As "reality is the universal experience of talking to ourselves," language defines the self, and Szasz emphasizes the import of "self-conversation" in the process of forming, defining, changing, and governing the self, i.e., "minding." Szasz attacks some noted philosophers of mind, including P.M. Churchland, D.C. Dennett, D. Hofstadter, R. Penrose, J.R. Searle, and F.J. Tipler, reserving his praise for M. Bahktin and G.H. Mead. Recommended for academic libraries.?E. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Praeger Trade (1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0275956032
• ISBN-13: 978-0275956035
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,564,605 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Neuromythology, January 30, 2000

By 

John Friedberg - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Meaning of Mind (Hardcover)

A BOOK REVIEW

by John Friedberg, M.D.

Hippocrates located the mind in the brain; Descartes, the soul in the pineal gland; and in 1994, Nobel Laureate Francis Crick reported "Free Will...in or near the anterior cingulate sulcus." Diseases of the mind, "mental illnesses," are even better localized: obsessive compulsive disorder is spotted in the frontal lobes, homosexuality in the hypothalamus and Schizophrenia is assigned now to Dopamine, now to Serotonin and now to the neurotransmitter molecule "du jour." "What's going on here?" asks the author, rhetorically: "They can't all be right." Thomas Szasz, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at State University of New York in Syracuse, thinks they may all be wrong. In this, his 23rd book, he quotes Hughlings Jackson, the great 19th century British neurologist: "There is no such entity as consciousness; we are from moment to moment differently conscious...(consciousness is) the directional mechanism of attention." And paying attention (minding), thinking, and even memory are not bits of neuroanatomy like hippocampal formations. Not all words denote things. This is an entertaining book, an erudite discourse into history and philosophy, linguistics and logic. Neurologists, whose authority resides in the reality of the nervous system, may find it especially pertinent. We must be as clear as possible in our thinking about the mind and the brain. If they were identical, Dr. Szasz points out, we wouldn't have two very different words. This book is a must for those of us who need to deal rationally with the tempting tales of "neuromythology" issuing daily from the media, the drug companies, and our psychiatric colleagues. The author argues that most of the popular mind/brain theorists, in their materialist-reductionist simplifications, "...are writing science fiction or justifying the medical (psychiatric) control of deviance or both." He reminds us that people deceive themselves and others by twisting words, medicalizing straightforward sins such as bearing false witness into modern non-entities such as recovered memory syndrome, false memory syndrome, even alien abduction. Such literal or "concrete thinking" is supposed to be a symptom of schizophrenia which according to Dr. Szasz, is the "paradigmatic metaphoric illness of modernity." Quoting Immanuel Kant that "to think is to talk to oneself," the author asserts that thinking is "self-conversation," the subject acknowledging his inner voices as his own; and that "hearing voices" (auditory hallucinations, one cardinal "symptom" of Schizophrenia) are self-conversations that the subject disowns, attributing his inner voices to other "speakers" such as God, the FBI, etc. Tenacious in this central criticism of schizophrenia since his Myth of Mental Illness was published in 1961, Dr. Szasz speculates that "...never before in history have so many educated people wasted so much time and money as have diverse professionals squandered on studying this nonexistent illness." The Meaning of Mind is an easy but scholarly read, alive with quotes. Dr. Szasz leads us through six chapters: Thought: Self-Conversation Responsibility: Self-blame and Self-Praise Memory: Fabricating the Past and the Future Brain: The Abuse of Neuroscience Mind: The History of an Idea Modernity's Master Metaphors: Mental Illness and Mental Treatment Here's a work of philosophy, true love of logic, with relevance for daily life. It will open your mind - metaphorically, of course.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this bookl!, June 21, 2004

By 

Sheldon Richman (United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Meaning of Mind: Language, Morality, and Neuroscience (Paperback)

This is an important book for anyone interested in such big issues as free will, neuroscience, morality, and the meaning of personhood. If you've wondered how Thomas Szasz can possibly believe that mental illness is a myth, here is the most basic answer. The idea of mental illness depends on a particular notion of "mind," and if that notion is mistaken, then the concepts dependent on it are likely mistaken also. Read it and see. Wonderfully written, informative, and thought-provoking.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A persuasive, challenging, succinctly written account, December 8, 2002

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Meaning of Mind: Language, Morality, and Neuroscience (Paperback)

The Meaning Of Mind: Language, Morality, And Neuroscience by Thomas Szasz (Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, State University of New York Health Science Center, Syracuse) is an articulate, highly accessible, and persuasive treatise that calls into question the trend of analyzing the mind as if it were nothing more than a collection of brain functions. Taking the viewpoint that people should be understood and judged as moral individuals with free will, and not as mindless slaves to the workings of brain chemistry, The Meaning Of Mind is a persuasive, challenging, succinctly written account that can be confidently recommended to students of Human Psychology.