Thomas Szasz is professor of psychiatry emeritus at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York and Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, Washington, DC. He is the author of over two dozen books in fifteen languages, including The Myth of Mental Illness and most recently, Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America.
-The book is readable and challenging; readers will never see
psychiatry in the same way again.- --Choice -Szasz now appears to
have been transformed into an ally rather than an enemy of the
National Health Service general adult psychiatrist. Szasz's project
has always been to argue passionately for a boundry of demarcation
around the responsibility and power of psychiatry....But what saves
this book from being just another mugging of psychiatry is that
Szasz does raise a fundamental question at the core of our
discipline. If we restricted our attention only to those clients
who wanted to see a psychiatrist, and disengaged from all those who
really didn't, how different might our professional practice and
experience be?- --The British Journal of Psychiatry -In Liberation
by Oppression . . . his latest thrust at the therapeutic state and
psychiatric mendacity, Szasz leaves no doubt as to the legitimacy
and credibility of his arguments. Masquerading as therapy and
working under the name of medicine, present-day psychiatry subjects
its patients (victims) to the most heinous forms of mental and
physical oppression. Comparing psychiatry to slavery may seem
extreme at first glance, but as Szasz expands his argument, we find
his reasoning profound and convincing. Because the state proclaims
that psychiatry is a branch of medicine and that all mental
diseases are brain diseases, psychiatry takes ever-greater control
of people and their behaviors. With the power forcibly to drug,
restrain, and imprison, it occupies the throne of the therapeutic
state. Despite all of its self-proclaimed efforts to -free- persons
from their -illnesses,- it actually oppresses and confines them.
Therapeutic enslavement by psychiatry is worse than all the forms
of political slavery the world has endured thus far. . . .
Liberation by Oppression is a valiant and worthy effort by one of
the great modern thinkers to keep the flame of liberty burning. It
is a bold, powerful, and intellectually spirited debunking of the
psychiatric pseudoscience that debases the human spirit and damages
countless lives. Szasz's message urgently needs to reach both those
who value science and those who share the values of the Declaration
of Independence. It is a masterful defense of both reason and
individual rights.- --Robert A. Baker, Independent Review -Thomas
Szasz has created an extraordinary body of work, that continues to
raise consequential challenges to the the prevailing myths of the
culture of psychology.- --Tobias Wolff, PEN/Faulkner Award-winner,
Stanford University
"The book is readable and challenging; readers will never see
psychiatry in the same way again." --Choice "Szasz now appears to
have been transformed into an ally rather than an enemy of the
National Health Service general adult psychiatrist. Szasz's project
has always been to argue passionately for a boundry of demarcation
around the responsibility and power of psychiatry....But what saves
this book from being just another mugging of psychiatry is that
Szasz does raise a fundamental question at the core of our
discipline. If we restricted our attention only to those clients
who wanted to see a psychiatrist, and disengaged from all those who
really didn't, how different might our professional practice and
experience be?" --The British Journal of Psychiatry "In Liberation
by Oppression . . . his latest thrust at the therapeutic state and
psychiatric mendacity, Szasz leaves no doubt as to the legitimacy
and credibility of his arguments. Masquerading as therapy and
working under the name of medicine, present-day psychiatry subjects
its patients (victims) to the most heinous forms of mental and
physical oppression. Comparing psychiatry to slavery may seem
extreme at first glance, but as Szasz expands his argument, we find
his reasoning profound and convincing. Because the state proclaims
that psychiatry is a branch of medicine and that all mental
diseases are brain diseases, psychiatry takes ever-greater control
of people and their behaviors. With the power forcibly to drug,
restrain, and imprison, it occupies the throne of the therapeutic
state. Despite all of its self-proclaimed efforts to "free" persons
from their "illnesses," it actually oppresses and confines them.
Therapeutic enslavement by psychiatry is worse than all the forms
of political slavery the world has endured thus far. . . .
Liberation by Oppression is a valiant and worthy effort by one of
the great modern thinkers to keep the flame of liberty burning. It
is a bold, powerful, and intellectually spirited debunking of the
psychiatric pseudoscience that debases the human spirit and damages
countless lives. Szasz's message urgently needs to reach both those
who value science and those who share the values of the Declaration
of Independence. It is a masterful defense of both reason and
individual rights." --Robert A. Baker, Independent Review "Thomas
Szasz has created an extraordinary body of work, that continues to
raise consequential challenges to the the prevailing myths of the
culture of psychology." --Tobias Wolff, PEN/Faulkner Award-winner,
Stanford University
"Thomas Szasz has created an extraordinary body of work, that
continues to raise consequential challenges to the the prevailing
myths of the culture of psychology." "-- Tobias Wolff, PEN/Faulkner
Award-winner, Stanford University"
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