Szasz Under Fire: The Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics [Paperback]

Ph.D. Jeffrey A. Schaler (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2004 | Series: Under Fire Series

Since he published The Myth of Mental Illness in 1961, radical psychiatrist and social critic Thomas Szasz has been the scourge of the psychiatric establishment, eloquently arguing against commitment of the mentally ill, the war on drugs, the insanity defense in criminal trials, Ritalin, homophobia, and other conventional dogmas. In Szasz Under Fire, experts who disagree with him explain their reasons, followed by Szasz's replies. Topics include the nature of mental illness, the right to suicide, drug use and abuse. An autobiography and bibliography of Szasz's works is also presented.

Editorial Reviews

From The New England Journal of Medicine

Thomas Szasz was the enfant terrible of 20th-century American psychiatry. His 1961 book, The Myth of Mental Illness (New York, Paul B. Hoeber), and his searing intellect and take-no-prisoners rhetorical style defined the terms of the discourse. Szasz under Fire consists of 12 essays by critics, Szasz's replies to each, and a brief autobiographical sketch. The essays are uneven; Szasz is more interesting than his critics, and, right or wrong, he always wins the debate. The book provides a deja vu experience and stimulates reflection on what we were arguing about then, why it seemed so important, and how we think about it today. (Figure) Szasz was born in Budapest in 1920, and although he spoke almost no English, he emigrated to the United States in 1938. He ranked first in his medical school class, but he didn't really want to practice medicine. As he put it, "My true passion was literature, history, philosophy, politics -- or, put more plainly, how and why people live, suffer, and die." After a year of medical residency, he shifted to psychiatry in order to "be eligible for training in psychoanalysis, not to practice psychiatry." He sought a platform from which to attack "the immoral practices of civil commitment and the insanity defense." This book, some 60 years later, continues that attack. Szasz's psychiatric residency was unusual. He never worked on an inpatient unit, and when his chairman suggested that he should have experience with "seriously ill patients," he quit the program. Szasz makes clear that his views about mental illness, involuntary treatment, and the insanity defense were well established before his exposure to psychiatry, psychoanalysis, or even medicine and that he was unusually successful at avoiding any experience that might have been relevant to them. Szasz's views are entirely ideological; they have nothing to do with empirical data and are therefore immune to arguments on the basis of data; they are premises, not conclusions. Szasz's central thesis is that "disease" means an abnormality of the body, and since doctors treat bodies, there may be brain diseases but not mental diseases. Corollaries are that involuntary treatment of mental disease violates fundamental liberties, that mental disease should not be considered in assessing criminal responsibility, and that physicians should have no privileged role in the prescription of drugs or in assisted suicide. Several of his critics argue with his definition of disease. They point out that diseases happen to people, not bodies, and review the evidence that brain diseases underlie major psychiatric disorders. These arguments have no effect on Szasz, although they are probably the chief reason that his position seems so out of date. Szasz also seems out of step with contemporary practice. He states that "the typical mental patient . . . is hospitalized and treated without his consent" (which has not been true since years before Szasz's residency) and that there has been little progress in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness (an assertion that would receive little support). For me, the underlying issue is Szasz's view of psychiatric patients as competent, autonomous adults who are different and who must be protected from a society that wants to infringe on their rights and uses that difference as a justification. It is an important perspective, and one that touches on fundamental values of our society, but tragically, it is less relevant to the seriously mentally ill than to almost anyone else. An alternative view -- that people with mental illness are childlike, helpless, and in need of our care and protection -- has little appeal to him. He even seems to question the view's premise; he speaks of the child's relationship to his parents as one based on domination and submission and argues that psychiatry rests on "a coercive pediatric model characterized by relations of domination and subjection." If one starts with the view that parenting is domination and pediatrics is coercive, the conclusion is that psychiatry is evil. In this book Szasz is called "the most influential ideologist of the `new' antipsychiatry of the 1960s and 1970s" and "a powerful intellectual ally of the civil liberties movement." He forced a sometimes reluctant profession to attend to the moral and ethical dimensions of its work, and though he is largely wrong, his arguments have been immensely valuable. Robert Michels, M.D.
Copyright © 2005 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.

Review

"One cannot help but be drawn into it." -- JAMA Vol. 293 No. 2, January 12, 2005

Schaler brings together psychologists, psychiatrists, and others who critique Szasz followed by Szasz's replies to each. -- Law & Social Inquiry, Book Notes, Vol. 30, No. 2

Stimulating and informative. -- CHOICE, April 2005

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Open Court (August 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812695682
• ISBN-13: 978-0812695687
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #752,796 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars High Level Dialogue, May 7, 2006

By 

Ejames LIEBERMAN (Potomac, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Szasz Under Fire: The Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics (Paperback)

A dozen thoughtful writers chosen by editor Jeffrey Schaler address Thomas Szasz, M.D. (author of "The Myth of Mental Illness" and many other books). Szasz then responds to these critics (and has the last word). It is like a series of book reviews with the author answering. An excellent idea, well-executed, on a controversial and important thinker. Full disclosure: I am one of the critics.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Szasz is the new Galileo, June 10, 2007

By 

A Reader (California USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Szasz Under Fire: The Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics (Paperback)

Think back about 400 years and imagine a hypothetical situation. Re-image historical events so that several representatives from the Catholic Church publicly and affably question Galileo Galilei despite their dismay at the impact of his views. In turn, Galileo then treats his critics with the same or at least parallel affability. Now consider modern day psychology rather than the start of modern solar mechanics, and there you have it--this book.

Approximately 5 out of 6 Szasz critics whose writings appear in this book are affable.

In its twelve chapters, there are a couple outliers.

5.0 out of 5 stars Szasz Under Fire, January 20, 2012

By 

Florence King - See all my reviews

This review is from: Szasz Under Fire: The Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics (Paperback)

I find it literally sickening but not in the least surprising that the first review from the NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE claims that Dr. Szasz is wrong, out of date, etc. The reason is that the formerly prestigious NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE like all too many others in the current medical pathocracy has sold out to BIG PHARMA with the mental death profession leading the pack in perversity, greed, fraud, lies and the destruction of their so called patients for personal gain and profit, making profit centers out of their patients suffering from a wide variety of social injustices, abuse, exploitation and theft by the power elite from the majority of people globally. That's why the powers that be are doing all in their evil power to spread the mental death profession in bed with BIG PHARMA throughout the world as part of their SHOCK DOCTRINE (a book) for pernicious social control of anyone who protests their evil and rape of the earth and all of humanity. See book, POLITICAL PONEROLOGY, for how psychopaths like these hijack groups, oranizations, corporations and governments as they did in NAZI Germany and Stalin Russia where the mental death profession also played a key role in suppressing and torturing dissidents and robbing them of all their human rights. It should be no surprise that the lethal poison atypical antipsychotics are now multibillion dollar global bestsellers since they are used to inflict chemical lobotomies on the masses to make them apathetic, easily controlled zombies barely able to function let alone protest the evil psychopaths in power. These are those good treatments the NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE is touting for bogus stigmas invented and voted in by the white male misogynist old boy network of the power elite in biological psychiatry for its junk science bible, the DSM, made up more of revelation than any science as Dr. Angell exposes in her book.

Dr. Marcial Angell, a Harvard professor and former editor of this now paid shill for BIG PHARMA was fired because she objected to the increasingly bogus, ghost written studies/articles in this and other so called health journals that became little more than paid advertisement vehicles for BIG PHARMA with no regard to patient welfare or safety. She has exposed the massive corruption in the medical industrial complex in her book, THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DRUG COMPANIES and many articles.

All that I can say is thank God for heroes like Dr. Szasz, Dr. Peter Breggin, Dr. Fred Baughman and all those brave people exposing this monstrous plague on humanity. I can only hope that the current NAZI DOCTORS (See book THE NAZI DOCTORS by Dr. Jay Lifton) get their own Nuremburg Trials some day for their millions of crimes against humanity that began in Nazi Germany and migrated to the U.S. and other countries to our everlasting peril and misery.