Background
Szasz, Thomas Stephen was born on April 15, 1920 in Budapest, Hungary. Came to United States, 1938, naturalized, 1944. Son of Julius and Lily (Wellisch) Szasz.
(BDSM sexuality as a powerful tool for self-transformation...)
BDSM sexuality as a powerful tool for self-transformation and the realization of magical and spiritual aims • Details how to combine the 6 major types of S&M stimulation with sexual stimulation for magical and transformative purposes • Explores sado-magical workings from both submissive and dominant perspectives • Traces the roots of the BDSM tradition from ancient pagan and shamanic rituals to historical figures such as the Marquis de Sade, Aleister Crowley, and Anton LaVey Sex magic allows us to tap in to the most abundant power source available: sexual energy. Magicians, shamans, and fakirs throughout history have used physical stimulation and ritual to harness sexual energy, unlock inner states of consciousness, and activate the ability to influence their surroundings. While pleasure is often the focus of this stimulation, pain is just as effective, if not more so. Combining both pleasure and pain, the sadomasochistic practice of Carnal Alchemy offers a powerful tool for self-transformation and the realization of magical and spiritual aims. Authors Stephen and Crystal Dawn Flowers explain the sado-magical workings of Carnal Alchemy from both the perspective of the submissive partner as well as the dominant. They detail the 6 major techniques of sadomasochistic stimulation--bondage, flagellation, piercing, penetration, clamping, and heat/cold--and how they can be combined with sexual stimulation for magical purposes. They trace the roots of the BDSM tradition in ancient pagan rites of passage, in indigenous shamanic rituals, and through historical figures who used this form of sexuality in their magic and philosophy, from the Marquis de Sade to more modern exemplars such as Aleister Crowley, Ernst Schertel, and Anton LaVey. This guide also covers specialized furniture and tools and the decor of “the Chamber” to trigger states of consciousness in which the Sado-Magician can effectively express his or her will.
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( 50th Anniversary Edition With a New Preface and Two Bon...)
50th Anniversary Edition With a New Preface and Two Bonus Essays The most influential critique of psychiatry ever written, Thomas Szasz's classic book revolutionized thinking about the nature of the psychiatric profession and the moral implications of its practices. By diagnosing unwanted behavior as mental illness, psychiatrists, Szasz argues, absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions and instead blame their alleged illness. He also critiques Freudian psychology as a pseudoscience and warns against the dangerous overreach of psychiatry into all aspects of modern life.
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(The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas S. Szasz, M.D. So...)
The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas S. Szasz, M.D. Softcover book published by Perennial Library, Revised Edition, copyright 1974, 1st Perennial Library edition, 1974
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(Dr. Szasz presents four case histories which highlight hi...)
Dr. Szasz presents four case histories which highlight his contention that pretrial psychiatric examination and subsequent hospitalization' are travesties on justice and healing which ought to be repudiated by both the legal and medical professions.
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(In this seminal work, Dr. Szasz examines the similarities...)
In this seminal work, Dr. Szasz examines the similarities between the Inquisition and institutional psychiatry. His purpose is to show "that the belief in mental illness and the social actions to which it leads have the same moral implications and political consequences as had the belief in witchcraft and the social actions to which it led."
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(Thomas Szasz suggests that governments have overstepped t...)
Thomas Szasz suggests that governments have overstepped their bounds in labeling and prohibiting certain drugs as "dangerous" substances and incarcerating drug "addicts" in order to cure them. Szasz asserts that such policies scapegoat illegal drugs and the persons who use and sell them, and discourage the breaking of drug habits by pathologizing drug use as "addiction." Readers will find in Szasz's arguments a cogent and committed response to a worldwide debate.
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(Stephen Sondheim has won seven Tonys, an Academy Award, s...)
Stephen Sondheim has won seven Tonys, an Academy Award, seven Grammys, a Pulitzer Prize and the Kennedy Center Honors. His career has spanned more than half a century, his lyrics have become synonymous with musical theater and popular culture, and in Finishing the Hat—titled after perhaps his most autobiographical song, from Sunday in the Park with George—Sondheim has not only collected his lyrics for the first time, he is giving readers a rare personal look into his life as well as his remarkable productions. Along with the lyrics for all of his musicals from 1954 to 1981—including West Side Story, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd—Sondheim treats us to never-before-published songs from each show, songs that were cut or discarded before seeing the light of day. He discusses his relationship with his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, and his collaborations with extraordinary talents such as Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, Ethel Merman, Richard Rodgers, Angela Lansbury, Harold Prince and a panoply of others. The anecdotes—filled with history, pointed observations and intimate details—transport us back to a time when theater was a major pillar of American culture. Best of all, Sondheim appraises his work and dissects his lyrics, as well as those of others, offering unparalleled insights into songwriting that will be studied by fans and aspiring songwriters for years to come. Accompanying Sondheim’s sparkling writing are behind-the-scenes photographs from each production, along with handwritten music and lyrics from the songwriter’s personal collection. Penetrating and surprising, poignant, funny and sometimes provocative, Finishing the Hat is not only an informative look at the art and craft of lyric writing, it is a history of the theater that belongs on the same literary shelf as Moss Hart’s Act One and Arthur Miller’s Timebends. It is also a book that will leave you humming the final bars of Merrily We Roll Along, while eagerly anticipating the next volume, which begins with the opening lines of Sunday in the Park with George.
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(Re-examining psychiatric interventions from a cultural-hi...)
Re-examining psychiatric interventions from a cultural-historical and political-economic perspective, Szasz demonstrates that the main problem that faces mental health policymakers today is adult dependency. Millions of Americans, diagnosed as mentally ill, are drugged and confined by doctors for non-criminal conduct, go legally unpunished for the crimes they commit, and are supported by the state - not because they are sick, but because they are unproductive and unwanted. Obsessed with the twin beliefs that misbehaviour is a medical disorder and that the duty of the state is to protect adults from themselves, we have replaced criminal-punitive sentences with civil-therapeutic programmes. The result is the relentless loss of individual liberty and erosion of personal responsibility - symptoms of the transformation of a Constitutional Republic into a Therapeutic State, unconstrained by the rule of law.
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([This is the MP3CD audiobook format.] [Read by Robin La...)
[This is the MP3CD audiobook format.] [Read by Robin Lawson] This intriguing book undercuts everything you thought you knew about psychotherapy. Until recent years, ''bad'' and ''immoral'' were the terms used to describe people who are now referred to as ''sick'' and ''in need of treatment.'' Moral and religious perspective has been replaced by medical and therapeutic rhetoric. It is little wonder why the world is plagued by legions of rapists, drug users, murderers, thieves, and child abusers, all of whom are now referred to as having one form or another of ''addiction'' and are thus either ''sick'' or suffering from ''mental illness.'' Accordingly, modern psychotherapists claim that these are in need of specialized ''therapy'' or ''treatment'' to help them ''cope with their disease.'' Moral relativism, bolstered by psychotherapy, has prevailed over the traditional ideas of self-control, individual responsibility, and moral culpability. Thomas Szasz moves to demythologize psychotherapy itself in a most provocative manner.
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(Therapists can broaden their point of view and expand the...)
Therapists can broaden their point of view and expand their options for treating individuals, couples, and families by understanding family myths. Here is a thorough and unique compilation of current studies on the development, evolution, and clinical implications of family myths. An outstanding group of international experts offers a variety of formulations regarding both personal and family myths in an attempt to bridge the chasms between individual, couple, and family systems dynamics. They focus on the conscious and unconscious elements of families’shared perceptual experiences and their relationship to behavioral, interactional patterns of individuals, couples, and family systems. The detailed descriptions of various clinical approaches to re-editing clients’personal, conjugal, and family myths will be enormously helpful to clinicians, theorists, trainers, and educators.
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(For St Augustine, sexual desire was a disease; to the gre...)
For St Augustine, sexual desire was a disease; to the great doctors of coitus today, lack of sexual desire is a disease. For Dr Szasz, both these presumptions are absurd and unscientific. He argues persuasively that human sexuality - however it may be expressed - reveals and reflects who we are and who we want to be. There are no "sexual disorders" that need to be cured by "sex therapies" - there is only the never-ending task of having to develop and shape our lives. Szasz maintains that we evade that task by handing the management of our sexual lives over to sex education and sex therapists.
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(The idea of insanity pervades every aspect of our daily l...)
The idea of insanity pervades every aspect of our daily lives. Thomas Szasz contends that the term actually functions as a euphemism for problems in living, as an excuse for crime and misbehaviour, as a stigma for invalidating adversaries - and, generally, as a metaphor and legal fiction. In "Insanity", Dr. Szasz presents a systematic articulation of the precise character and practical consequences of the idea of mental illness. He shows the way to a better understanding of this almost universally misunderstood condition by first establishing the scientific criteria and linguistic conventions we use for deciding what constitutes bodily disease, and then demonstrating the metaphorical character of the "diseases" that affect the mind rather than the brain. This book was originally published in 1987 by John Wiley.
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(Szasz attacks the sacred cows of contemporary American so...)
Szasz attacks the sacred cows of contemporary American society. In his acerbic and aphoristic style he rails against the hypocrisy and fraudulence of the futile and murderous war against drugs, the sordid and often self-seeking practices of psychotherapy and the atrocities of psychiatry.
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(In "Our Right to Drugs", Szasz shows how the present drug...)
In "Our Right to Drugs", Szasz shows how the present drug war started at the beginning of this century, when the US government first assumed the task of protecting people from patent medicines. By the end of World War I the free market in drugs was but a dim memory. Instead of dwelling on the familiar impracticality and unfairness of drug laws, Szasz demonstrates the deleterious effects of prescription laws, which place people under lifelong medical supervision. The result is that most Americans today prefer a coercive and corrupt command drug economy to a free market in drugs. Szasz stresses the consequences of the fateful transformation of the central aim of US drug prohibitions: from protecting the public from being fooled by mis-branded drugs to protecting them from harming themselves by self medication. He emphasises that a free society cannot endure if the state treats adults as if they were truant children and if its citizens reject the values of self-discipline and personal responsibility. After discussing the racial aspects of drug prohibition (eg. drug enforcers are far more likely to accost blacks than whites), Szasz suggests a connection between drug prohibition and the personal dread of the availability of an easy and pleasurable way to commit suicide.
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( Thomas Szasz is renowned for his critical exploration o...)
Thomas Szasz is renowned for his critical exploration of the literal language of psychiatry and his rejection of officially sanctioned definitions of mental illness. His work has initiated a continuing debate in the psychiatric community whose essence is often misunderstood. Szasz's critique of the established view of mental illness is rooted in an insistent distinction between disease and behavior. In his view, psychiatrists have misapplied the vocabulary of disease as metaphorical figures to denote a range of deviant behaviors from the merely eccentric to the criminal. In A Lexicon of Lunacy, Szasz extends his analysis of psychiatric language to show how its misuse has resulted in a medicalized view of life that denies the reality of free will and responsibility. Szasz documents the extraordinary extent to which modern diagnosis of mental illness is subject to shifting social attitudes and values. He shows how economic, personal, legal, and political factors have come to play an increasingly powerful role in the diagnostic process, with consequences of blurring the distinction between cultural and scientific standards. Broadened definitions of mental illness have had a corrosive effect on the criminal justice system in undercutting traditional conceptions of criminal behavior and have encouraged state-sanctioned coercive interventions that bestow special privileges (and impose special hardships) on persons diagnosed as mentally ill. Lucidly written and powerfully argued, and now available in paperback, this provocative and challenging volume will be of interest to psychologists, criminologists, and sociologists.
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(In this short work, Dr. Szasz takes aim at conventional p...)
In this short work, Dr. Szasz takes aim at conventional psychiatry, and at the attendent system of courts, hospitals, and psychiatrists who confine patients against their will. The focal point is a Supreme Court case involving a man forcibly committed to a Florida asylum for 14 years. In refuting the widely held notion that the Donaldson case represents an advancement in the rights of mental patients, Dr. Szasz has put the American legal establishments on trial.
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(In this thoughtful and compelling analysis, the world's f...)
In this thoughtful and compelling analysis, the world's foremost critic of coercions of the psychiatric institution defends a patient's right to choose life or death.
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(Una de las cuestiones más problemáticas a las que nos enf...)
Una de las cuestiones más problemáticas a las que nos enfrentamos hoy en día es quién debe determinar cuándo y cómo morimos. Libertad fatal es una elocuente defensa del derecho de cada individuo a elegir una muerte voluntaria. Thomas Szasz , un célebre psiquiatra, piensa que podemos hablar acerca del suicidio tranquila y racionalmente, tal como él hace en este libro, y que, en última instancia, podemos aceptarlo como un aspecto más de la condición humana. Mediante el mantenimiento de normas que determinan que la muerte voluntaria no es legal, nuestra sociedad está enajenando una de sus libertades básicas y permitiendo que el sistema médico-psiquiátrico trate a los individuos de manera inhumana. La obra se pregunta acerca de algunas de las cuestiones éticas más significativas de nuestro tiempo, avanzando respuestas claras e inteligentes a cuestiones como el suicidio entendido como un acto voluntario o como consecuencia de una enfermedad mental, la actitud de los médicos a la hora de evitarlo, la polémica sobre la autorización de ayuda al suicida para que lo cometa... El concienzudo análisis consecuencia de estas reflexiones considera primordial la autonomía del paciente: por tanto, ni a los pacientes se les debe privar de ejercer su libre voluntad, ni a los médicos se les debe permitir formar parte del proceso proporcionando los medios para la muerte voluntaria.
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( In recent decades, American medicine has become increas...)
In recent decades, American medicine has become increasingly politicized and politics has become increasingly medicalized. Behaviors previously seen as virtuous or wicked, wise or unwise are now dealt with as healthy or sick--unwanted behaviors to be controlled as if they were health issues. The modern penchant for transforming human problems into diseases and judicial sanctions into treatments, replacing the rule of law with the rule of medical discretion, leads to the creation of a type of government social critic Thomas Szasz calls pharmacracy. Medicalizing troublesome behaviors and social problems is tempting to voters and politicians alike: it panders to the people by promising to satisfy their needs for dependence on medical authority and offers easy self-aggrandizement to politicians as the dispensers of more and better health care. Thus, the people gain a convenient scapegoat, enabling them to avoid personal responsibility for their behavior. The government gains a rationale for endless and politically expedient wars against social problems defined as public health emergencies. The health care system gains prestige, funding, and bureaucratic power that only an alliance with the political system can provide. However, Szasz warns, the creeping substitution of pharmacracy for democracy--private medical concerns increasingly perceived as requiring a political response--inexorably erodes personal freedom and dignity. Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America is a clear and convincing presentation of this hidden danger, all too often ignored in our health care debates and avoided in our political contests.
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( Originally called mad-doctoring, psychiatry began in th...)
Originally called mad-doctoring, psychiatry began in the seventeenth century with the establishing of madhouses and the legal empowering of doctors to incarcerate persons denominated as insane. Until the end of the nineteenth century, every relationship between psychiatrist and patient was based on domination and coercion, as between master and slave. Psychiatry, its emblem the state mental hospital, was a part of the public sphere, the sphere of coercion. The advent of private psychotherapy, at the end of the nineteenth century, split psychiatry in two: some patients continued to be the involuntary inmates of state hospitals; others became the voluntary patients of privately practicing psychotherapists. Psychotherapy was officially defined as a type of medical treatment, but actually was a secular-medical version of the cure of souls. Relationships between therapist and patient, Thomas Szasz argues, was based on cooperation and contract, as is relationships between employer and employee, or, between clergyman and parishioner. Psychotherapy, its emblem the therapist's office, was a part of the private sphere, the contract. Through most of the twentieth century, psychiatry was a house divided-half-slave, and half-free. During the past few decades, psychiatry became united again: all relations between psychiatrists and patients, regardless of the nature of the interaction between them, are now based on actual or potential coercion. This situation is the result of two major "reforms" that deprive therapist and patient alike of the freedom to contract with one another: Therapists now have a double duty: they must protect all mental patients-involuntary and voluntary, hospitalized or outpatient, incompetent or competent-from themselves. They must also protect the public from all patients. Persons designated as mental patients may be exempted from responsibility for the deleterious consequences of their own behavior if it is attributed to mental illness. The radical differences between the coercive character of mental hospital practices in the public sphere, and the consensual character of psychotherapeutic practices in the private sphere, are thus destroyed. At the same time, as the scope of psychiatric coercion expands from the mental hospital to the psychiatrist's office, its reach extends into every part of society, from early childhood to old age.
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( The human mind abhors the absence of explanation, but f...)
The human mind abhors the absence of explanation, but full understanding is never possible. Human understanding is likely to be incomplete at best and, more often, utterly fallacious. To make matters worse, it is likely to be supported as truth and wisdom by religious and scientific authority, intellectual fashion and social convention. In Words to the Wise, Thomas Szasz offers a compendium of thoughts, observations, and aphorisms that address our understanding of a broad range of subjects, from birth to death. In this book, Szasz tackles a problem intrinsic to the human condition. What problem? In the words of the American humorist Josh Billings: "The trouble with people is not what they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so." Many of Thomas Szasz's books have been devoted to exposing what "ain't so" about mental illness and psychiatry. Here, Szasz applies the same skeptical spirit to the larger problem of people knowing much that "ain't so." About addiction, Szasz observes: "If a person ingests a drug prohibited by legislators and claims that it makes him feel better, that proves he is an addict; if he ingests a drug prescribed by a psychiatrist and claims that it makes him feel better, that proves that mental illness is a biomedical disease." About beauty: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; ugliness is in the personality of the beholden." About libertarians: "Libertarians regard liberty as contingent on the right to property; scientists regard disease as contingent on pathological alteration of the body. All libertarians reject the notion of 'socialist liberty,' yet many accept the notion of 'mental disease.'" Or about power: "Many of my critics say I am hostile to medicine and physicians. They are wrong. I am hostile only to the power of the medical profession and of physicians." Szasz notes that despite enormous social pressure for a shared perspective on how the world works and how we ought to live, every person'sáunderstanding, not only of himself, but of the world about him, is different from every other person's. This volume shows how the quest for truth is a never-ending challenge, and must presuppose an honest acceptance of questions, problems, and uncertainty.
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( The libertarian philosophy of freedom is characterized ...)
The libertarian philosophy of freedom is characterized by two fundamental beliefs: the right to be left alone and the duty to leave others alone. Psychiatric practice routinely violates both of these beliefs. It is based on the notion that self-ownership—exemplified by suicide—is a not an inherent right, but a privilege subject to the review of psychiatrists as representatives of society. In Faith in Freedom, Thomas Szasz raises fundamental questions about psychiatric practices that inhibit an individual’s right to freedom. His questions are fundamental. Is suicide an exercise of rightful self-ownership or a manifestation of mental disorder? Does involuntary confinement under psychiatric auspices constitute unjust imprisonment, or is it therapeutically justified hospitalization? Should forced psychiatric drugging be interpreted as assault and battery on the person or is it medical treatment? The ethical standards of psychiatric practice mandate that psychiatrists employ coercion. Forgoing such “intervention” is considered a dereliction of the psychiatrists’ “duty to protect.” How should friends of freedom—especially libertarians—deal with the conflict between elementary libertarian principles and prevailing psychiatric practices? In Faith in Freedom, Thomas Szasz addresses this question more directly and more profoundly than in any of his previous works.
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( Understanding the history of psychiatry requires an acc...)
Understanding the history of psychiatry requires an accurate view of its function and purpose. In this provocative new study, Szasz challenges conventional beliefs about psychiatry. He asserts that, in fact, psychiatrists are not concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of bona fide illnesses. Psychiatric tradition, social expectation, and the law make it clear that coercion is the profession's determining characteristic. Psychiatrists may "diagnose" or "treat" people without their consent or even against their clearly expressed wishes, and these involuntary psychiatric interventions are as different as are sexual relations between consenting adults and the sexual violence we call "rape." But the point is not merely the difference between coerced and consensual psychiatry, but to contrast them. The term "psychiatry" ought to be applied to one or the other, but not both. As long as psychiatrists and society refuse to recognize this, there can be no real psychiatric historiography. The coercive character of psychiatry was more apparent in the past than it is now. Then, insanity was synonymous with unfitness for liberty. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a new type of psychiatric relationship developed, when people experiencing so-called "nervous symptoms," sought help. This led to a distinction between two kinds of mental diseases: neuroses and psychoses. Persons who complained about their own behavior were classified as neurotic, whereas persons about whose behavior others complained were classified as psychotic. The legal, medical, psychiatric, and social denial of this simple distinction and its far-reaching implications undergirds the house of cards that is modern psychiatry. Coercion as Cure is the most important book by Szasz since his landmark The Myth of Mental Illness.
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(Understanding the history of psychiatry requires an accur...)
Understanding the history of psychiatry requires an accurate view of its function and purpose. In this provocative new study, Szasz challenges conventional beliefs about psychiatry. He asserts that, in fact, psychiatrists are not concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of bona fide illnesses. Psychiatric tradition, social expectation, and the law make it clear that coercion is the profession's ...
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(Defining "medicalization" as the perception of nonmedical...)
Defining "medicalization" as the perception of nonmedical conditions as medical problems and nondiseases as diseases, Thomas Szasz has devoted much of his career to exposing the dangers of "medicalizing" the conditions of some who simply refuse to conform to society's expectations. Szasz argues that modern psychiatry's tireless ambition to explain the human condition has led to the treatment of life's difficulties and oddities as clinical illnesses rather than as humanity revealed in its fullness. This collection of impassioned essays, published between 1973 and 2006, chronicles the author's long campaign against the orthodoxies of psychiatry. From "Medicine to Magic" to "Medicine as Social Control", the book delves into the fascinating history of medicalization, including "The Discovery of Drug Addiction," "Persecutions for Witchcraft and Drugcraft," and "Food Abuse and Foodaholism." In a society that has little tolerance for those who live outside its rules, Dr. Szasz's writings are as relevant today as ever.
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(The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays by S...)
The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays by Szasz, Thomas [Syracu...
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(For more than a half century Thomas Szasz has devoted muc...)
For more than a half century Thomas Szasz has devoted much of his career to a thorough and provocative critique of the practice of psychiatry. In many ways his latest work, Psychiatry: The Science of Lies, is a culmination of his life's work: to portray the integral role of deception in the history and practice of psychiatry. Szasz argues that the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness stands in the same relationship to the diagnosis and treatment of bodily illness that the forgery of a painting stands to the original masterpiece. Art historians, museum directors, private collectors, and the legal system all seek to distinguish forgeries from originals. Those concerned with medicine on the other hand-physicians, patients, politicians, health insurance providers, and legal professionals-take the opposite stance when faced with the challenge of distinguishing everyday problems in living from diseases of the body, systematically authenticating nondiseases as diseases. The boundary between disease and nondisease - genuine and imitation, original and copy, truth and falsehood - thus becomes arbitrary, shifting, and uncertain. With a wealth of well-researched new evidence, Szasz examines the ways in which dishonesty and misrepresentation have permeated all aspects of psychiatric practice: the doctors, the patients, and even at times those who work to uncover psychiatric abuse. Delivering his sophisticated analysis in lucid prose and with a sharp wit, Szasz continues to engage and challenge readers of all backgrounds.
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(More than fifty years ago, Thomas Szasz showed that the c...)
More than fifty years ago, Thomas Szasz showed that the concept of mental illness-a disease of the mind-is an oxymoron, a metaphor, a myth. Disease, in the medical sense, affects only the body. He also demonstrated that civil commitment and the insanity defense, the paradigmatic practices of psychiatry, are incompatible with the political values of personal responsibility and individual liberty. The psychiatric establishment's rejection of Szasz's critique posed no danger to his work: its defense of coercions and excuses as "therapy" supported his argument regarding the metaphorical nature of mental illness and the transparent immorality of brutal psychiatric control masquerading as humane medical care. In the late 1960s, the launching of the so-called antipsychiatry movement vitiated Szasz's effort to present a precisely formulated conceptual and political critique of the medical identity of psychiatry and of psychiatric coercions and excuses. Led by the Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing, the antipsychiatrists used the term to attract attention to themselves and deflect attention from what they did, which included coercions and excuses based on psychiatric principles and power. For this reason, Szasz rejected, and continues to reject, psychiatry and antipsychiatry with equal vigor. Subsuming his work under the rubric of antipsychiatry betrays and negates it just as surely and effectively as subsuming it under the rubric of psychiatry. In Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared, Szasz powerfully argues that his writings belong to neither psychiatry nor antipsychiatry. They stem from conceptual analysis, social-political criticism, and common sense.
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(In Western thought, suicide has evolved from sin to sin-a...)
In Western thought, suicide has evolved from sin to sin-and-crime, to crime, to mental illness, and to semilegal act. A legal act is one we are free to think and speak about and plan and perform, without penalty by agents of the state. While dying voluntarily is ostensibly legal, suicide attempts and even suicidal thoughts are routinely punished by incarceration in a psychiatric institution. Although many people believe the prevention of suicide is one of the duties the modern state owes its citizens, Szasz argues that suicide is a basic human right and that the lengths to which the medical industry goes to prevent it represent a deprivation of that right. Drawing on his general theory of the myth of mental illness, Szasz makes a compelling case that the voluntary termination of one's own life is the result of a decision, not a disease. He presents an in-depth examination and critique of contemporary anti-suicide policies, which are based on the notion that voluntary death is a mental health problem, and systematically lays out the dehumanizing consequences of psychiatrizing suicide prevention. If suicide be deemed a problem, it is not a medical problem. Managing it as if it were a disease, or the result of a disease, will succeed only in debasing medicine and corrupting the law. Pretending to be the pride of medicine, psychiatry is its shame.
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("Chem byla psikhiatriia do padeniia Berlinskoi steny po o...)
"Chem byla psikhiatriia do padeniia Berlinskoi steny po obe storony ot nee i kakie mrachnye korni v glubine vekov ona imela, kakova tiranicheskaia psikhologiia negodiaev, pretenduiuschikh na sviaschennoe zvanie vrachei vchera i segodnia, kak opravdyvalos' nasilie v otnoshenii ""kozlov otpuscheniia"" v epokhu razvitogo industrial'nogo obschestva, kak i pochemu bol'nitsy stali sredstvom massovogo istrebleniia i ""uspokoeniia"" nezhelatel'nykh ego elementov, iz kakoi izvraschennoi logiki iskhodili gospoda, lechivshie polovye ""izvrascheniia"", - obo vsem etom v zamechatel'noi knige cheloveka, po pravu zanimaiuschego svoe mesto v panteone bortsov za osvobozhdenie chelovecheskoi prirody riadom s Erikhom Frommom i Gerbertom Markuze. Kniga rekomendovana k prochteniiu psikhiatrami i ikh patsientami.... .. "
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(Thomas Szasz has been challenging the very existence of "...)
Thomas Szasz has been challenging the very existence of "mental illness" for over twenty-five years. His advocacy of freedom of choice and the abolition of involuntary psychiatry has made him America's most controversial psychiatrist. The Therapeutic State is a unique collection of topical essays about what the author calls "one of the grandest illusions of our age, mental illness, and the quixotic crusade against it." Pivoting his analysis on news-making events, Szasz exposes the fallacies of our present penchant for interpreting the behavior of "sane" persons as goal-directed and therefore sensible, and the behavior of "insane" persons as caused by a "mental illness" and therefore senseless. In a series of diverse short pieces, originally published in newspapers and magazines, the author shows us that individual liberty and responsibility are indivisible, and that we cannot protect ourselves against coercive psychiatry's threats to liberty so long as we persist in using psychiatric ideas and interventions to evade responsibility. Szasz's recommendation is simple but radical: So-called mental patients should be treated like other people - as no more subject to loss of liberty or entitled to excuses from responsibility than anyone else. Psychiatrists should be treated like other professionals - having no more power to inculpate innocent persons or to expurgate guilty ones than, say, accountants or architects. In short, our aim should be to disarm psychiatrists, much as the Founding Fathers disarmed priests. Nothing less can free us from the "benefits" and "harms" of the Therapeutic State.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0879752394/?tag=2022091-20
( Breslin demonstrates that, for two millennia, states in...)
Breslin demonstrates that, for two millennia, states in East Asia, Europe, and America have successfully used pleasure to protect themselves and advance their interests, at a small fraction of the cost of militarized policies. Indeed, the Chinese demonstrated that pleasure-based policies primed a stream of highly profitable foreign trade and bolstered the state. Pleasure was feared because it was effective as both an offensive and defensive strategy. The colleens of Ireland and the bibis of India showed how inexorably effective pleasure could be in confounding militarily stronger invaders. In contrast, resorting to violence and pain generally undermined aggressive states. Cultural factors have shaped the choice of pleasures used. Food-centered China has used food, as well as sex and tourism, as tools in its foreign relations. Rome used wine; Byzantium, precious metals, banquets, and public spectacles; Venice, sex, money, and art; England, money and education. America has used sex, money, education, music, and tourism. Breslin's provocative text is based on a wide reading of secondary sources and some primary sources as well as a quarter century of teaching the history of foreign relations.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0275974316/?tag=2022091-20
(This landmark article first published in 1960 lay the fou...)
This landmark article first published in 1960 lay the foundation for Szasz's expanded work in his classic book "The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct." The article Myth of Mental Illness (Kindle Edition) is essential reading for psychology students, educators and professionals and forms part of an initiative to make important, insightful and engaging psychology publications widely available.
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(Examines the left-hand path and reveals the masters of th...)
Examines the left-hand path and reveals the masters of the tradition • Explores the practices and beliefs of many left-hand path groups, including the Cult of Set, the Hell-Fire Club, and heretical Sufi, Zoroastrian, Christian, and Muslim sects • Investigates many infamous occult personalities, including Helena Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley, the Marquis de Sade, and Anton LaVey • Explains the true difference between the right-hand path and the left-hand path--union with and dependence on God versus individual freedom and self-empowerment From black magic and Satanism to Gnostic sects and Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way, the left-hand path has been linked to many practices, cults, and individuals across the ages. Stephen Flowers, Ph.D., examines the methods, teachings, and historical role of the left-hand path, from its origins in Indian tantric philosophy to its underlying influence in current world affairs, and reveals which philosophers, magicians, and occult figures throughout history can truly be called “Lords of the Left-Hand Path.” Flowers explains that while the right-hand path seeks union with and thus dependence on God, the left-hand path seeks a “higher law” based on knowledge and power. It is the way of self-empowerment and true freedom. Beginning with ancient Hindu and Buddhist sects and moving Westward, he examines many alleged left-hand path groups, including the Cult of Set, the Yezidi Devil Worshippers, the Assassins, the Neoplatonists, the Hell-Fire Club, the Bolsheviks, the occult Nazis, and several heretical Sufi, Zoroastrian, Christian, and Muslim sects. Following a carefully crafted definition of a true adherent of the left-hand path based on two main principles--self-deification and challenge to the conventions of “good” and “evil”--the author analyzes many famous and infamous personalities, including H. P. Blavatsky, Faust, the Marquis de Sade, Austin Osman Spare, Aleister Crowley, Gerald Gardner, Anton LaVey, and Michael Aquino, and reveals which occult masters were Lords of the Left-Hand Path. Flowers shows that the left-hand path is not inherently evil but part of our heritage and our deep-seated desire to be free, independent, and in control of our destinies.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594774676/?tag=2022091-20
(Thoughts is a collection of twelve essays by Stephen Yabl...)
Thoughts is a collection of twelve essays by Stephen Yablo which together constitute a modern-day examination of Cartesian themes in the metaphysics of mind. Yablo offers penetrating discussions of such topics as the relation between the mental and the physical, mental causation, the possibility of disembodied existence, the relation between conceivability and possibility, varieties of necessity, and issues in the theory of content arising out of the foregoing. The collection represents almost all of Yablo's work on these topics, and features one previously unpublished piece.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199266476/?tag=2022091-20
( In this brilliantly original and highly accessible work...)
In this brilliantly original and highly accessible work, Thomas Szasz demonstrates the futility of analyzing the mind as a collection of brain functions. Instead of trying to unravel the riddle of a mythical entity called the mind, Szasz suggests that our task should be to understand and judge persons always as moral agents responsible for their own actions, not as victims of brain chemistry. This is Szasz's most ambitious work to date. In his best-selling book, The Myth of Mental Illness, he took psychiatry to task for misconstruing human conflict and coping as mental illness. In Our Right to Drugs, he exposed the irrationality and political opportunism that fuels the Drug War. In The Meaning of Mind, he warns that we misconstrue the dialogue within as a problem of consciousness and neuroscience, and do so at our own peril. In The Meaning of Mind, Thomas Szasz argues that only as a verb does the word mind mean something in the real world, namely, attending or heeding. Minding is the ability to pay attention and adapt to one's environment by using language to communicate with others and oneself. Viewing the mind as a potentially infinite variety of self-conversations is the key that unlocks many of the mysteries we associate with this concept. Modern neuroscience is a misdirected effort to explain mind in terms of brain functions. The claims and conclusions of the diverse academics and scientists who engage in this enterprise undermine the concepts of moral agency and personal responsibility. Szasz shows that the cognitive function of speech is to enable us to talk not only to others but to ourselves (in short, to be our own interlocutor), and that the view that mind is brain—embraced by both the scientific community and the popular press—is not an empirical finding but a rhetorical ruse concealing humanity's unceasing struggle to control persons by controlling the vocabulary. The discourse of brain-mind, unlike the discourse of man as moral agent, protects people from the dilemmas intrinsic to holding themselves responsible for their own actions and holding others responsible for theirs. Because we live in an age blessed by the fruits of materialist science, reductionist explanations of the relationship between brain and mind are more popular today than ever, making this book an indispensible addition to the seemingly recondite debate about, simply, who we are.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0275956032/?tag=2022091-20
(The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration a...)
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. The Age of Enlightenment profoundly enriched religious and philosophical understanding and continues to influence present-day thinking. Works collected here include masterpieces by David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as religious sermons and moral debates on the issues of the day, such as the slave trade. The Age of Reason saw conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism transformed into one between faith and logic -- a debate that continues in the twenty-first century. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ Cambridge University Library N002188 London : printed for John Clark, and Richard Hett, 1725. viii,80p. ; 8°
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( In this timely, carefully reasoned social history of th...)
In this timely, carefully reasoned social history of the United States, the New York Times bestselling author of Religious Literacy and God Is Not One places today’s heated culture wars within the context of a centuries-long struggle of right versus left and religious versus secular to reveal how, ultimately, liberals always win. Though they may seem to be dividing the country irreparably, today’s heated cultural and political battles between right and left, Progressives and Tea Party, religious and secular are far from unprecedented. In this engaging and important work, Stephen Prothero reframes the current debate, viewing it as the latest in a number of flashpoints that have shaped our national identity. Prothero takes us on a lively tour through time, bringing into focus the election of 1800, which pitted Calvinists and Federalists against Jeffersonians and “infidels;” the Protestants’ campaign against Catholics in the mid-nineteenth century; the anti-Mormon crusade of the Victorian era; the fundamentalist-modernist debates of the 1920s; the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s; and the current crusade against Islam. As Prothero makes clear, our culture wars have always been religious wars, progressing through the same stages of conservative reaction to liberal victory that eventually benefit all Americans. Drawing on his impressive depth of knowledge and detailed research, he explains how competing religious beliefs have continually molded our political, economic, and sociological discourse and reveals how the conflicts which separate us today, like those that came before, are actually the byproduct of our struggle to come to terms with inclusiveness and ideals of “Americanness.” To explore these battles, he reminds us, is to look into the soul of America—and perhaps find essential answers to the questions that beset us.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061571296/?tag=2022091-20
(A new theory as to how the mind arises from the physical ...)
A new theory as to how the mind arises from the physical brain. Profound implications for the issues of consciousness in computers and the relationships of consciousness to quantum physics, evolution, religion, and immortality of the mind.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0940780364/?tag=2022091-20
Szasz, Thomas Stephen was born on April 15, 1920 in Budapest, Hungary. Came to United States, 1938, naturalized, 1944. Son of Julius and Lily (Wellisch) Szasz.
Bachelor of Arts Cincinnati, 1941. Doctor of Medicine, University Cincinnati, 1944. Doctor of Science (honorary), Allegheny College, 1975.
Doctor of Science (honorary), University Francisco Marroquin, Guatemala, 1979. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Towson University, 1999. Doctor Sc(honorary), State University of New York, 2001.
Intern 4th Medical Service Harvard, Boston City Hospital, 1944-1945. Assistant resident medicine Cincinnati General Hospital, 1945-1946, assistant clinician internal medicine div. out-patient dispensary, 1946. Assistant resident psychiatry University Chicago Clinics, 1946-1947.
Training research fellow Institute Psychoanalysis, Chicago, 1947-1948, research assistant, 1949-1950, staff member, 1951-1956. Practice medicine, specializing in psychiatry, psychoanalysis Chicago, 1949-1954, Bethesda, Maryland, 1954-1956, Syracuse, New York, since 1956. Professor psychiatry State University of New York Health Science Center, 1956-1990, professor psychiatry emeritus, since 1990.
Visiting professor department psychiatry University Wisconsin, Madison, 1962, Marquette University School Medicine, Milwaukee, 1968, University New Mexico, 1981. Holder numerous lectureships, including C.P. Snow lecturer Ithaca College, 1970. E.S. Meyer Memorial lecturer University Queensland Medical School.
Lambie-Dew orator Sydney University, 1977. Member national advisory committee board Tort and Medical Yearbook. Consultant committee mental hygiene New York State Bar Association.
Member research advisory panel Institute Study Drug Addiction. Advisory board Corporation Economic Education, since 1977.
("Chem byla psikhiatriia do padeniia Berlinskoi steny po o...)
(Examines the left-hand path and reveals the masters of th...)
(BDSM sexuality as a powerful tool for self-transformation...)
( In this timely, carefully reasoned social history of th...)
(Defining "medicalization" as the perception of nonmedical...)
( 50th Anniversary Edition With a New Preface and Two Bon...)
( Breslin demonstrates that, for two millennia, states in...)
(Re-examining psychiatric interventions from a cultural-hi...)
(In "Our Right to Drugs", Szasz shows how the present drug...)
( Originally called mad-doctoring, psychiatry began in th...)
(Thomas Szasz suggests that governments have overstepped t...)
(This landmark article first published in 1960 lay the fou...)
(In this thoughtful and compelling analysis, the world's f...)
( Thomas Szasz is renowned for his critical exploration o...)
(The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration a...)
(Thoughts is a collection of twelve essays by Stephen Yabl...)
( In this brilliantly original and highly accessible work...)
(Therapists can broaden their point of view and expand the...)
( The libertarian philosophy of freedom is characterized ...)
(For more than a half century Thomas Szasz has devoted muc...)
(More than fifty years ago, Thomas Szasz showed that the c...)
(Una de las cuestiones más problemáticas a las que nos enf...)
( In recent decades, American medicine has become increas...)
(For St Augustine, sexual desire was a disease; to the gre...)
(Stephen Sondheim has won seven Tonys, an Academy Award, s...)
(In Western thought, suicide has evolved from sin to sin-a...)
(Thomas Szasz has been challenging the very existence of "...)
( Understanding the history of psychiatry requires an acc...)
(Understanding the history of psychiatry requires an accur...)
( The human mind abhors the absence of explanation, but f...)
(The book addresses advances in the study of cognition in ...)
(The book addresses advances in the study of cognition in ...)
(The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays by S...)
(Health, Mental Health, Psychology, Medical Studies, Publi...)
(Myth of Psychotherapy: Mental Healing as Religion, Rhetor...)
(Szasz attacks the sacred cows of contemporary American so...)
(A new theory as to how the mind arises from the physical ...)
(The idea of insanity pervades every aspect of our daily l...)
(The startling truth about today's sex therapy)
(The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas S. Szasz, M.D. So...)
([This is the MP3CD audiobook format.] [Read by Robin La...)
(Book by Szasz, Thomas Stephen)
(Book by Szasz, Thomas Stephen)
(In this seminal work, Dr. Szasz examines the similarities...)
(Psychiatry, Mental Health)
(In this short work, Dr. Szasz takes aim at conventional p...)
(Book by Szasz, Thomas)
(Language:Chinese.The LeMytheDeLaMaladieMentale mental ill...)
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(Psychology)
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(Dr. Szasz presents four case histories which highlight hi...)
Author: Pain and Pleasure, 1957, The Myth of Mental Illness, 1961, Law, Liberty and Psychiatry, 1963, Psychiatric Justice, 1965, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1965, Ideology and Insanity, 1970, The Manufacture of Madness, 1970, The Second Sin, 1973, Ceremonial Chemistry, 1974, Heresies, 1976, Karl Kraus and the Soul-Doctors, 1976, Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry, 1976, Psychiatric Slavery, 1977, The Theology of Medicine, 1977, The Myth of Psychotherapy, 1978, Sex by Prescription, 1980, The Therapeutic State, 1984, Insanity: The Idea and its Consequences, 1987, The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary, 1990, Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market, 1992, A Lexicon of Lunacy, 1993, Cruel Compassion, 1994, The Meaning of Mind, 1996, Fatal Freedom, 1999, Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America, 2001, Liberation By Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry, 2002, Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary, 2004, Faith in Freedom: Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices, 2004, Szasz Under Fire: The Psychiatric Abolitionist Answers His Critics, 2004, My Madness Saved Me: The Madness and Mariage of Virginia Woolf, 2006, Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry, 2007, The Medicalization of Everyday Life, 2007, Psychiatry: The Science of Lies, 2008. Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared, 2009, editor: The Age of Madness, 1973, Suicide Prohibition: The Shame of Medicine, 2011. Consultant editor of Psychiatry and Psychology: Stedman's Medical Dictionary, 22d edit, 1973.Contributing editor: Reason, since 1974, Libertarian Review, since 1986. Member editorial board Psychoanalytic Rev, since 1965, Journal Contemporary Psychotherapy, since 1968, Law and Human Behavior, since 1977, Journal Libertarian Studies, since 1977, Children and Youth Services Rev, since 1978, American Journal Forensic Psychiatry, since 1980, Free Inquiry, since 1980.
Thomas Szasz was one of the main catalysts of the social and intellectual movement in the 1960s and 1970s which has become known as ‘anti-psychiatry’. His central thesis is that psychiatry' is an illegitimate extension of physical medicine. The concepts of illness and disease as used in physical medicine are, he argues, biological concepts, based on objective norms of bodily functioning.
The concept of mental illness on the other hand is a moral and legal concept defined by norms which are social-evaluative in nature. To extend physical medicine in this way is not only misleading but positively harmful. It results in the twin evils of psychiatric oppression, involuntary ‘treatment’ of people who may be distressed, deviant, even delinquent, but not really ill.
And psychiatric dependence, passive reliance on ‘therapy’ instead of facing up to life's problems and tackling them for what they are in an open and direct way. Szasz has developed this thesis in a number of detailed studies of different areas of psychiatric thought and practice, historical and modern. In hisclinical work he follows his own precept, offering, through psychotherapy, improved understanding as a basis for independent action.
Szasz’s radical stance has provoked often impassioned denunciations by psychiatrists. However, the institutionalized abuse of psychiatry in some countries, and the sporadic occurrences of such abuses elsewhere, show the extent to which psychiatric patients remain vulnerable in the ways he identified. His sceptical analysis has served as the spur to the development of a far more sophisticated understanding of the concepts not only of mental but also of physical disorder, and through this to improvements in practice.
Commander Medical Corps, United States Naval Reserve, 1954-1956. Fellow American Psychiatric Association (life), American Psychoanalytic Association, International Psychoanalytic Society, Western New York Psychoanalytic Society.
Married Rosine Loshkajian, October 19, 1951 (div. 1970); children: Margot Szasz Peters, Susan Marie Szasz Palmer.