Customer Reviews

Psychiatric Justice

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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 1965 book, "In this book, I discuss certain uses of psychiatry by the state. My aim is to demonstrate how the modern state may use psychiatry as a weapon against the individual citizen. The involuntary pretrial psychiatric examination of persons accused of crime is such a weapon... I contend that this practice is a travesty on justice and healing, and ought to be repudiated by both the legal and the medical professions."

Here are some representative quotations from the book:

"My purpose in this book is to examine the common practice ... of allowing the prosecution and the court to question the mental competence of a defendant... As a result a person accused of crime may be declared mentally unfit to stand trial and committed to a mental institution until he recovers his competence to stand trial. Such commitment is for an indefinite period. It is often, in effect, a life sentence."
"It is my personal opinion that doctors not retained by a patient, and especially doctors representing opposing interests, are in no position to render any psychiatric service, in the correct sense of that term, to that patient."
"I stand by my previous position that involuntary mental hospitalization, civil or criminal, has no place in a civilized, free society and must be abolished."