Bibliography

  • "The Myth of Mental Illness", Thomas Szasz, 1961.
  • "The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement", Thomas Szasz, 1970.
  • "Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry", Thomas Szasz, 1976.
  • "Anti-Freud - Karl Kraus' Criticisms of Psychiatry", Thomas Szasz, 1976.
  • "The Theology of Medicine", Thomas Szasz, 1977.
  • "The Myth of Psychotherapy", Thomas Szasz, 1978.
  • "Insanity - the Idea and its Consequences", Thomas Szasz, 1987.
  • "Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market", Thomas Szasz, 1992.
  • "The Meaning of Mind: Language, Morality and Neuroscience", Thomas Szasz, 1996.
  • "Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide", Thomas Szasz, 1999.
  • "Faith in Freedom", Thomas Szasz, 2004
  • "The Medicalisation of Everyday Life", Essays by Thomas Szasz, 2007.
  • "Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry", Thomas Szasz, 2007.
  • "Psychiatry: the Science of Lies", Thomas Szasz, 2008.
  • "Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared", Thomas Szasz, 2009.
  • "Suicide Prohibition: The Shame of Medicine", Thomas Szasz, 2011.
  • "Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good", James Davies, 2013.

Worth remembering - drugs never cause behaviours, nor does lack of drugs

               "The view that mental illness causes murder and suicide, and the view that drugs used to treat mental illness cause such behaviours, are both false. One excuses the actor from responsibility by blaming his behaviour on psychiatric diseases, the other excuses him from responsibility by blaming his behaviour on psychiatric treatments. Both contentions are claims serving the claimants' medical, legal and economic interests. And both claims bolster psychiatric slavery, based equally on the insanity defense and on civil commitment. Promoting psychiatric excuses, like promoting psychiatric coercions, does not weaken psychiatric slavery, it strengthens it.
              I maintain that mental illness is part of a person's identity or self, not a disease apart from him. If a mental patient is dangerous - if he assaults and kills another person, or mutilates or kills himself - it is not because of a mental disease he allegedly has, nor because of a drug he takes or does not take, but because of who he is and what he decides."

Thomas Szasz, 2002.

It is worth remembering this truth as we wade through torrents of web reports that x,y,z drug "caused" x,y,z behaviour, from organisations and individuals that are supposedly sceptical of psychiatry and that oppose psychiatric coercion and psychiatric slavery.

Neither drugs nor the lack of drugs cause behaviours. Saying that they do can effectively serve to endorse psychiatry.

About Me

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I am an amateur FILOSOFER. (I am not really a sofa). I dropped out of Cambridge University though I got an "S" grade in the entrance examination. I eventually received a 1st class Bachelors degree elsewhere. I received A.H.R.B. funding to pursue postgraduate study, but did not do so. Please enjoy my blogs. To parafrase Orwell, I am trying to make political blogging into an art. My intellectual heroes are Kenan Malik, Thomas Szasz and Noam Chomsky. I have made some mistakes in my life - and I would like to apologize wholeheartedly and from the depths of my cushions for any problems I may have caused and may be causing for anyone anywhere.