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The Myth of Psychotherapy: Mental Healing as Religion, Rhetoric, and Repression

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Dr. Szasz provides a refreshing break from the psychobabble that dominates so much public discourse. Psychology and psychiatry are not nearly as scientific as they pretend to be. There is a world of difference between the "mental health" field and the non-psychiatric branches of medical science.

This book and this book in particular were pivitol in my true understanding of "mental illness". I just wish more doctors would read this book, and have half the guts szasz has when it comes to defending the victims of this modern witch hunt we seem to accept all to willingly as part of modern life.

Thomas Szasz (born 1920) is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center. He is a well-known critic of psychiatry, of the social role of medicine in modern society, and is a social libertarian.

Szasz states in the Preface to this 1978 work, "The present work is an effort to complete the demythologizing of psychiatry begun in The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct. As mental illness is the core concept of what psychatrists allegedly study, so psychotherapy is the paradigmatic practice in which they supposedly engage. The task of psychiatric demythologizing would thus remain incomplete without scrutinizing the ideas and interventions that psychiatrists designate by the term psychotherapy."

Here are some representative quotations from the book:

"Virtually anything anyone might do in the company of another person may now be deemed as psychotherapeutic. If the definer has the proper credentials, and if his audience is sufficiently gullible, any such act will be publicly accepted and accredited as a form of psychotherapy."
"Hence, the very origin of the word psychosurgery is deeply revealing of its character as fake therapy on a metaphorical organ."
"When such an argument is made by Jacobins against clerics, we recognize it as anticlericalism. When it is made by Nazis against Jews, we recognize it as anti-Semitism. But when it is made by Freud against women, we do not recognize it as antifeminism."
"If there is any change in the 'patient,' it is, in the last analysis, brought about by the 'patient' himself. Hence, it is false to say that the psychotherapist treats or is a therapist. It would be more accurate to say that the 'patient' in psychotherapy treats or is a therapist."

This is a brilliant book about the nature and roots of psychotherapy. It's too bad that more don't seem to read it. Szasz traces the roots of psychotherapy all the way back to the ancient Greeks and biblical times, showing that Socrates as well as other rhetoricians and religious leaders saw themselves as people who "cured souls" through words guiding people into issues of morality and virtue. Since it consists only in conversation, psychotherapy is thus seen to be a rhetorical act, not a medical treatment. Furthermore, Freud and Jung both made it very clear on various occasions that psychotherapy also belongs in the realm of religion, not science, though both tried to hitch it to the rising star of scientific respectability when it suited them. Finally, psychotherapy and psychiatric treatment rely very much on repression in the sense that they take away the patient's freedom and impose on him the expectations and beliefs of others about his behavior in a very arbitrary way. Szasz sees the most dangerous scenario as a world in which governments have the power to decide what treatments people should be permitted or ought to be forced to receive. He wrote this in 1978, and in some ways it seems prophetic as Americans debate the dangers of a national health-care system, which surely will include the repressive type of psychotherapy that Szasz warns us about. He shows the power of labeling and naming that psychotherapy already commonly exercises in condemning or else excusing various behaviors according to the fashions of current psychotherapeutic theory. For a liberating new look at a field whose concepts have brainwashed a great many, read this provocative and insightful book!

The author, Professor of psychology is not alone with his critics. Many
more secular psychiatrists and psychologists are exposing their own
profession! How?
Szasz says that there is no such thing as mental sickness existing at
all. He says that reason and psyche are not material. The body can
become sick, because the body is material. But the soul is not material.
Therefore the soul or mind cannot become sick. The further conclusion
is that Psychology is not natural science, because natural science
deals with material. In fact I read about it elsewhere!
The author who is a jewish atheist asserts that psychiatry is a secular
state religion and a social control system which disguises itself under
the claims of scienticity, a pseudoscience that parodies medicine by
using medical sounding words as if heart attack and heartbreak would not
belong to two different categories of phenomenon. Think how dangerous
the world is in which we live! You just need a bad government, or a
doctor who dislikes you and faster than you can look you get a good
treatment in a psychiatric clinic with the prognosis that you won`t see a
flower field again in your life! Are you a fundamentalist? Take a
detour if you see a psychologist! He might catch you!
Szasz has also an explanation for Freud`s endeavour and success. "One of
Freud`s most powerful motives in life was... to inflict vengeance on
Christianity".
He says that psychotherapy is "a fake religion that seeks
to destroy true religion".
How does the author know? E. Fuller Torrey whom the Washington Post
has called the most famous psychiatrist in America said. "Psychiatry
has been willing to sanctify its values with the holy water of medicine
and offer them up as the true faith of `Mental Health'. It is a false
Messiah."
How can anybody be interested in despising psychology if he has no good reason for it? The author must be courageous. So far he has not been declared a lunatic from his enemies. This book is very negative about psychology. If you can take it you should take it. It is not yet confiscated! It makes you widen your horizon- without drugs!

Thomas Szasz has become a better writer since he wrote "The Myth of Mental Illness" in 1961. It is clearer in this book that he is just smearing psychotherapy than in the former book, where his smears are better hidden amongst erudite references to twentieth-century philosophy and other confusing stuff. That's why this book, although better written, isn't as brilliant as the former, in my opinion. Psychotherapy has posed an enormous threat to people who don't want their ego-compensations exposed. The power of the backlash against the discoveries of Freud should not be underestimated, and this would account for the enormous market for the works of Thomas Szasz, which are just pure anti-psych propaganda.