Tomas Szasz on mental health

You must watch this then follow the link to his website http://www.szasz.com/
Perhaps most radically ... Thomas Szasz deemed mental illness a mythic and monstrous beast, and proclaimed that 'mntal illness' was a fiction. Insanity, he has continued ever since to claim, is not a real disease, whose nature has been progressively scientifically unveiled; Essence or Existence: The Problem of Psychiatry-Schizophrenia


mental illness is rather a myth, forged by psychiatrists for their own greater glory.
Over the centuries, medical men and their supporters have been involved, argues Szasz, in a self-serving 'manufacture of madness.' In this, he indicts both the pretensions of organic psychiatry and the psychodynamic followers of Freud, whose notion of the 'unconscious' in effect breathed new life into the obsolete metaphysical Cartesian dualism. For Szasz, any expectation of finding the etiology of mental illness in body or mind -- bove all in some mental underworld -- must be a lost cause, a dead-end, a linguistic error, and even an exercise in bad faith. 'Mental illness' or the 'unconscious' are not realities but at best metaphors. In promoting such ideas, psychiatrists have either been involved in improper cognitive imperialism or have rather naively pictorialized the psyche -- reifying
the fictive subtance behind the substantive. Properly speaking, contends Szasz, insanity is not a disease with origins to be excavated, but a behavior with meanings to be decoded.Social existence is a rule-governed game-playing ritual in which the mad person bends the rules and exploits the loopholes. Since the mad person is engaged in social performances that obey certain expectations so as to defy others, the pertinent questions are not about the origins, but about the conventions, of insanity. In this light, Szasz dismisses traditional approaches to the history of madness, as questions mal posés, and aims to
reformulate them." --From: Porter, R., Introduction, in Porter, R. and Wright, D., eds.,The Confinement of the Insane: International Perspectives, 1800-1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); pp. 1-19; p. 2.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• health
• mental
• psychiatry

[winstono75]

Very strange questioning...

[tcpdj1]

@winstono75 Why do u think so

[bboymarcel]

off course psychiatry is the greatest fraud ever ,..just watch my new video ...

you will find out the truth...

Thomas Szasz is a star for me...and psychiatry should be available like green pepers or cigatrettes

that´s true.-)

.-)

[bboymarcel]

Psychiatry is a nowaday govern-mental comunistic movement and use concentration camps

[ginablackhawk]

AWESOME video. Never seen this before. Did you interview him? When and where? Thanks for putting it up!

[CliveGains80s]

i think these people are possessed even down to the psychiatric nursing. just pick up a psyrietric nursing guide from any decade. it is bogus. its all about there terms.

i think cchr have some new docs. it really explorers the eugenics world movement.

[RyuDarragh]

Psychiatry is the Chiropractic art of Mental Illness. It may be full of utter bullshit, but that does not mean there is not a grain of truth or two to be found within. Far worse than psychiatry is the "privatized" prison system in the US. Imprisonment has gone up 500% since this was pulled off.

[DouglasFelts32]

tcpi and others, to tell you the truth if you think psychiatry and their labels and business r valid...then you are one of the many who r fooled and dont know any better. I couldnt give any other data that Dr. Szazz and others couldnt. Believe me Szazz knows he truth...and psychiatrists(who are like the biggest hypocrites ever(read the bible and the stories of Jesus if you dont think so) dont like it. Psychiatrists and their methods r frauds. Hell waits for the psychiatrist if they dont change.

[RunLiberty]

Ron Paul 2012

Paul is fan of Thomas Szasz

[Esoparagon]

Your questions are weird. lol

[thijskole123]

fuck

[createrainbowz]

his book manufacture of madness is excellent.