I did read some of his drivel at the website and, the more I read, the more inane and/or irrelevant it all seems. The only part of the site I liked reading is http://www.szasz.com/critics.htm
Here are a few quotes from Szasz.
“There was no evidence for a humoral imbalance causing illness, but the doctrine prevailed for two thousand years.”
Here he spends a lot of time harping on certain antiquated nonsense (humoral imbalance), as if psychiatry is the only area where nonsense has appeared. For example, in science, we had the flat earth, phlogiston and epicycles. Of course all this harping would be relevant if only it weren’t for the fact that psychiatry can evolve with time.
“There is no evidence for a chemical imbalance causing mental illness, but that does not impair the doctrine’s scientific standing or popularity.”
This is surely untrue because administering a chemical imbalance (i.e. drugging someone) can alter their behavior and produce effects such as seizures and hallucinations.
“Neither the American Psychiatric Association nor American presidents remind people of the caveat of the great nineteenth-century English neurologist, John Hughlings Jackson (1835-1911): “Our concern as medical men is with the body. If there be such a thing as disease of the mind, we can do nothing for it.””
This glib quote is easily defused. Perhaps Szasz would be placated if we just called it brainal disease instead of mental disease.
Here’s a connundrum for you. A blow to the head can leave no detectable lesions and yet can trigger a seizure. Is the seizure behavior due to brain injury or praxeology?