Psychiatric Slavery [Paperback]

Thomas Stephen Szasz (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 159 pages
• Publisher: Syracuse Univ Pr (Sd) (March 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815605110
• ISBN-13: 978-0815605119
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,859,536 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Points out many inconsistencies regarding the Donaldson case, January 10, 2003

By 

Richard J. Brzostek (New England, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Psychiatric Slavery (Paperback)

In his book, Psychiatric Slavery, Szasz makes the comparison of involuntary institutionalization and slavery. The book primarily discusses the case of Kenneth Donaldson, which was a Supreme Court case on the right of treatment. The book discusses the various briefs of the case, elaborating on various issues.

Donaldson was institutionalized because he told his parents that the neighbors were trying to poison him. Although his parents sent him to an asylum for this, Donaldson maintained he was not mentally disturbed.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) assisted Donaldson in attempting to gain his freedom, but in a bizarre way. Although Donaldson wanted nothing to do with medication and shock therapy, he sued the hospital director because he was not receiving treatment. From the data presented, I got the impression that the ACLU used Donaldson for their own ends, which was to strengthen the power of psychiatry.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Szasz's It, July 1, 2008

By 

M. H. Levenson (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Psychiatric Slavery (Paperback)

I've always been opposed to anti-psychiatry and Thomas Szasz seems to be its most prominent spokesman. I read this book simply to understand more of the opposition; know the enemy, so to speak.

The book is primarily concerned with the issue of involuntary confinement in state mental hospitals, the legality and the morality of this. When this book was written most states had either begun or were in the process of releasing a great many of their state mental hospital patients in what has been called deinstitutionalization. Now very few state mental hospitals exist.

Szasz's arguments are, at times, cogent and respectable. His empathy for humankind and freedom and America as a free nation is attractive and made of the very best intentions. This book was not concerned with the veracity of mental illness as an illness (which Szasz has questioned in his other books) but instead only with involuntary confinement - or simply confinement - in state mental hospitals - or any hospitals. He likens the involuntary committed mental hospital patients as slaves in the way blacks were before slavery was completely outlawed in the Constitution. Now he wants the same thing for psychiatry - ban it, outlaw it, throw it away.

Szasz is using the guilt-trip method of argument, so to speak. He's yelling at his audience through the paper to get up and do something about this inhumanity because after all if you don't, you're to blame. His writing style is not academic but radical, angry. Time after time he refers to psychiatrists as performing "mad-doctoring" of being "wardens" in the state mental hospital which, in his estimation, is a prison. He tares apart the American Psychiatric Association on one page, and the American Civil Liberties Union on the next.

Szasz, who is a fully trained psychiatrist, was popular because he was seen as an expert, and not just a fool with an opinion. These days his views are seen as insincere, smug and impractical. And, the Church of Scientology, which has become enlivened in recent years with its celebrity converts, uses Szasz's many arguments on the falsehood of mental illness to promote their own agenda.

Speaking from how well Szasz presents his argument, his writing and so forth, the book is not especially bad. There are some good points made about state mental hospitals involuntarily committing patients, which the American public must be made aware of. And they were, because at this present time well over 90% of all state mental hospital patients have been released. Psychiatry is done on an outpatient basis nowadays, and most mentally ill people prefer this and get benefit from this. Although I cannot recommend this book; ideologically speaking, it'd be like a Jew recommending Mein Kampf. I can't do it and I won't do it.