Verily thou hast wounded me. Zounds!
Don’t be afraid of engaging the text. Szasz addresses all of these issues point-by-point. If you’re not willing to do any reading, I’m not going to bother refuting you.
At least trolls like Nathyn are industrious enough to cherry-pick quotes. You’re just lazy.
as a future clinical psychologist, I must say he’s right on the money.
mental illness is a grave misnomer.
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?
Baxter, if we called it a brainial disease it would be treated by neurologists. The idea that psychiatric disorders are brain disorders is contradictory - if it is true, then it’s clear that psychiatry should not exist. There are not 2 specialities treating the stomach in entirely different ways. The clear fact, from the history of psychiatry, and from the practice of psychiatry, is that no one ever thinks mental disease is brain disease, until someone challenges them to clarify just what mental disease is. Some brain disorders used to be considered mental disorders, such as epilepsy. Epilepsy is no longer treated by psychiatrists, precisely because it was discovered to be a brain disease, and hence treated by neurologists.
What is mental disease then? The history is that psychiatry grew out of the state, and originally served as a legal concept, as it still does. Mental disease is an excuse to jail innocent people, or free guilty people. Only recently have people who are not locked up sought to escape responsibility by having themselves classified as mentally ill.
I use to respect this guy a lot but its been waning ever since I found out he belongs to the CCHR. I can’t take scientologists seriously…
I think ‘disease’ and ‘illness’ are not the best words, but I don’t see the harm in defining types of behavior or states of mind. And if one wants, he should be free to alter his state of mind.
Forced drugging is, of course, much of the problem. Locking people up for behavior that harms no one else is also wrong. One thing that really bothers me is the idea of someone being unfit to stand trial. A person can be locked up and accused of a crime but never given a trial if he is ruled ‘unfit’.
The heart of the matter is that some people are locked up without breaking the law. The language used today is, ‘a danger to himself or to others’. It is a human right that we have access to a fair trial when arrested. The state may not prosecute you for a crime it cannot prove you committed. There has to be an overt act. This stands to reason because someone can change his mind about committing a crime at the last minute. And if you believe it is the state’s job to protect you from yourself, we should go back to 19th century classical liberal roots which say each person has the right to bodily and mental self ownership and the right to be free from violence from others. This implies taking responsibility for ones own actions. It is not the state’s job to ‘protect’ you from yourself.
As Szasz correctly points out, psychiatry is an arm of the law and is the most egregious offender of libertarian principles. It cannot even exist as a medical specialty without the use of force. That is no overstatement. That is not to say some people have not been helped in some way during a consultation with a psychiatrist. No, on the contrary, all it takes many times for an idividual to feel some relief from his troubles is to talk to another human being… especially when that other human being does not try to evaluate for the person looking for help. But this practice of talking and listening is not unique to psychiatry. The field of therapy is wide open for people to find help which works for them. So removing coersion from psychiatry would make psychiatry no different from many other professions involving talking and listening. But at the same time, without the phony premise upon which the use of force or the threat of the use of force is based(think DSM, psychiatry’s bible), it would be impossible to justify all the state funding which props the profession up.
What many, if not most, libertarians appear to be unaware of is that the DSM does not contain a single entry which has not been voted into existence as a brain disease. That makes the DSM a political document, not a medical one. This, of course, gives power over others to mental health practitioners who depend on a gullible public who fail to distinguish between legitimate medicine and junk science.
Psychiatry from its very beginning in 17th century England has always been a statist institution. They continue to cloak themselves in language befitting of a legitimate scientific endeavour with humanity’s best interests at heart. As usual they keep changing the language they use to describe themselves. But there were no ‘mental asylums’ or ‘care homes’(the terms become more and more benign-sounding) when psychiatry was first adopted by the state - they were called ‘State Hospitals’. It is statist to its very core and it has become today’s tool of choice for social control, after seperation of church and state removed religion as the state’s trump card when playing for social control.
Psychiatry is about coersion and excuses - locking up the innocent and excusing the guilty. Talk about turning the justice system on its head… on the whim of someone’s subjective opinion. In terms of violating libertarian principles, this is so stark, one wonders how it has continued to escape the attention of so many ordinary men-in-the-street the world over, let alone libertarians.
Jim
p.s. an excellent three-part interview series with Szasz on ABC in 2009:
Mon. 12/06/18 23:13 EDT
.post #173
[url=Thomas Szasz on Psychiatry - #23 by baxter]
How would you know unless you cut into the person’s brain?
Your expression “seizure behavior” borders on oxymoronic. “Behavior” is chosen; physiological events, such as seizures, heart rate changes, etc., are involuntary.
The seizure is related to the blow on the head, which has probably caused brain injury or some other damage or malfunction.
Some other Szasz videos:
Thomas Szasz on Socialism in Health Care
Dr. Thomas Szasz at the ISEPP 2011 Conference in L.A. (part 1) url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWIr2lEvY5Y[/url]
A conversation with Thomas Szasz - a preview
Thomas Szasz - Part One (Does Mental Illness Exist?)
Thomas Szasz - Part Two (The Function of Psychiatry)
Thomas Szasz - Part Three (The Role of the State)
Thomas Szasz on America’s Drug Forum pt.1of3 pt.2of3 pt.3of3
Tomas Szasz on mental health
Thurs. 12/06/21 13:07 EDT
.post #175
[url=Thomas Szasz on Psychiatry - #23 by baxter]
The title of the essay from which this quote is taken is MENTAL ILLNESS AS BRAIN DISEASE: A BRIEF HISTORY LESSON.
You omitted the preceding and following sentences, so let me now supply them:
Here are three of the four other instances of the expression “humoral imbalance”:
Szasz is “harping” on this, not “as if psychiatry is the only area where nonsense has appeared,” but rather to provide, consistent with the essay’s title, a brief history of (the psychiatric nonsense of) mental disease as brain disease.
But does going from
to
constitute “evolution”?
As Szasz writes, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (“The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing”).
But Szasz doesn’t write “There is no evidence for a chemical imbalance producing effects such as behavioral alterations, seizures, and hallucinations,” nor would he.
Szasz writes “There is no evidence for a chemical imbalance causing mental illness.”
Szasz does not deny that ingesting a drug can produce or induce a physiological effect. Clearly, if you introduce some chemical which penetrates the blood-brain barrier, the expression “chemical imbalance” becomes somewhat meaningful. What’s more, since you know what was introduced and in what amount, you clearly have evidence.
But this has nothing to do with psychiatry or “mental illness.” Psychiatrists don’t measure the neuro-chemical levels and ratios of acetylcholine, histamine, norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin, then, based on those numbers, make a diagnosis of “chemical balance” or “chemical imbalance.” If they did that, they’d be doing neurology, not psychiatry.
[list][] Neurologist: Clinical examination skills; empiricism; objectivity; surgery
[] Psychiatrist: Rich description of mental phenomena, well developed interviewing skills; understanding multiple causation; appreciation of individual differences; interpersonal context; psychological and behavioral therapies[/list] (Source)
Psychiatrists don’t perform bio-chemical testing.
Psychiatrists perform socio-behavioral labeling.
Then, after the “mentally ill” label has been officially applied, they assert, without evidence, that the “mental illness” is “caused” by a “chemical imbalance.” It’s the pseudo-scientific equivalent of attributing behavior to “humoral imbalance” or “demonic possession,” i.e., it’s pure quackery and psychobabble. It’s pure name-calling.
I find it ironic that Steve Wiseman summarizes Thomas Szasz’s work as “…simply words and definitions”. Does Wiseman think name-calling and slapping psychiatric labels on people constitutes bona fide medical practice? Does Wiseman think assaulting, incarcerating, poisoning, and torturing innocent persons constitutes bona fide medical practice? To “Dr.” Wiseman I say “Physician, heal thyself.”
Thurs. 12/06/21 15:47 EDT
.post #176
[url=Thomas Szasz on Psychiatry - #20 by baxter]
This is a sensible question, because “lesion” is a word that applies to living tissue. “Disease” is
But “the mind” is not corporeal, i.e., of the body of an organism, so how can “the mind” have “lesions” or be “diseased”? So to suggest, as you seem to here, that “Well, just because we can’t see lesions of the mind doesn’t mean that the mind isn’t diseased; after all, what about Beriberi?!” is not sensible. We can never “see lesions of the mind,” because “the mind” is just an abstraction, and abstractions don’t have “lesions,” nor can abstractions be “diseased” or “healthy.”
Thurs. 12/06/21 17:01 EDT
.post #177
[url=Thomas Szasz on Psychiatry - #25 by DrunknMunky]
I used to respect Ron Paul a lot but it’s been waning ever since I found out he belongs to the US Congress.
What do you have against the CCHR, anyway?
Accomplishments (a sampler):[list][]In the early 1970s, CCHR’s investigations led to government inquiries into numerous state psychiatric facilities in California, Illinois, Hawaii, Michigan and Missouri - resulting in hospital administrators and psychiatrists being dismissed, criminal and grand jury investigations being held, and closure of major psychiatric units due to the abuses CCHR had uncovered against patients.
[]In 1976, due to CCHR’s efforts, the first law to protect patients against enforced electroshock and psychosurgery was passed in California, providing informed consent and banning their use on children under the age of 12.
[]In the 1990s, CCHR helped uncover and expose that up to 150 restraint deaths occur each year in the U.S. alone, with nearly 10% of these being children, some as young as six.
[]In the 1980s/early 1990s, CCHR spearheaded a campaign to expose and ban Deep Sleep Treatment (DST) at Chelmsford Private Psychiatric Hospital in Sydney, Australia. The “treatment” involved knocking the patient unconscious for three weeks with a cocktail of psychiatric drugs and electroshocking them daily, without their consent. It killed 48 people.
[]CCHR photographed and then exposed secret psychiatric “slave labor” camps in South Africa where tens of thousands of Africans were incarcerated in the 1970s and 80s against their will in disused mining compounds, drugged and subjected to painful electroshock without anesthetics.
[]CCHR in Germany conducted comprehensive research that established conclusively that Germany’s leading psychiatrists provided the theory as well as the “scientific” justification for the Nazi government to destroy “life unworthy of living.” … In 1995 CCHR published the acclaimed book Psychiatrists: The Men Behind Hitler (see also MeTZelf).
[]Along with officials and members of the Italian parliament, CCHR Italy inspected and investigated concentration-camp-like conditions in the country’s psychiatric asylums.
[]CCHR’s investigations led to a major private psychiatric hospital chain in the U.S. being investigated by 14 federal and state investigations for fraud and patient abuse.[/list]
What’s wrong with that? What other organization is doing these things? Which Christian, Jewish, or Muslim organizations are funding the fight against coercive psychiatry?
Here is Szasz:
Fine, but what does this have to do with Szasz? Szasz isn’t a Scientologist.