Sex by Prescription: The Startling Truth About Today's Sex Therapy [Paperback]

Thomas Stephen Szasz (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: Syracuse Univ Pr (Sd) (December 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815602502
• ISBN-13: 978-0815602507
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,679,825 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars flawed, but fun, August 24, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Sex by Prescription: The Startling Truth About Today's Sex Therapy (Paperback)

Szasz's intentions here are good here; as usual he seeks to expose the messianic pretensions of the mental health movement. In this case, his target is the sex therapy and sex education rackets. Unfortunately, his partisanship sometimes leads to attacks based on shoddy reasoning. A few examples will suffice: Szasz accuses the noted sex therapist William Masters of continuing the psychiatric persecution of homosexuals. His evidence? While visiting California once, Masters declined to comment on the Briggs Initiative, an anti-homosexual ballot measure. I certainly think this initiative deserved to be condemned, but Szsaz gives no context for Masters' silence(which, after all, was just that, silence). We are not told why Masters refused to comment, or even how much he knew about the initative. Perhaps Masters didn't know anything at all about it. I am speculating, of course, but can do little else given the paucity of details in Szsaz's account.
One more example: Szasz claims that Mary Calderone, the doyenne of sex education, is actually a sexual authoritarian. He bases this accusation partly on her stated opposition to handing out contraceptives to teenagers. Making a fine art of literalism here, Szasz argues that Calderone must oppose handing out birth control to married nineteen year olds. I think most intelligent readers would asume that by "teenagers" Calderone meant minors.
All this said, the book is entertaining, and makes valid points about the pathologization of sexual behaviour by self-styled "experts". Particularly interesting are passages attacking circumcision, sex change therapy, and the use of porn films in medical schools. Fans of Szasz's potent combination of moral passion and acerbic polemicism will not come away disappointed.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A PROMINENT "ANTI-PSYCHIATRIST" LOOKS INTO SEX THERAPIES, August 11, 2010

By 

Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sex by Prescription: The Startling Truth About Today's Sex Therapy (Paperback)

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 1980 book, "The penis, some wag has observed, never lies. But sexologists do---principally because they are determined to conceal moral values and social policies as medical diagnoses and treatments. 'Scientific' sexology is a veritable Trojan horse: appearing to be modernity's gift to mankind in its struggle for freedom and dignity, it is, in fact, just another strategy for its pacification and enslavement."

Here are some representative quotations from the book:

"Although I am generally critical of, and skeptical toward, professional approaches to sexual problems, nothing that I say in this book is intended to imply that all medical, psychological, or psychiatric help for persons who seek such assistance for their sexual difficulties is worthless."

"This piece of pseudo-English gives us a glimpse of the real ugliness---at once linguistic and spiritual---of Masters and Johnson's work. Here is a sentence that carefully eliminates persons from both sides of the therapeutic relationship."

"This tactic points up one of the most objectionable aspects of sex education, ignored by most of its critics---namely, its intimate connection with psychiatry. The connection between psychiatry and sex education is deplorable, first, because it helps to foster the impression that anyone opposed to the sexual values advocated by the sex educators is opposed to mental health and science..."

"(S)ome people might prefer to get their sex education and sex therapy from 'professionals,' while others might choose books and pictures, parents and peers, friends and lovers, pornographers and prostitutes."