Thomas Szasz
Thomas Szasz is professor emeritus of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. His books include Law, Liberty, and Psychiatry, The Manufacture of Madness, Ideology and Insanity, Ceremonial Chemistry, The Myth of Psychotherapy, Psychiatry, and The Medicalization of Everyday Life.
The ethics of psychoanalysis
248 pages.
Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences
The idea of 'insanity' pervades every aspect of our daily lives. Here, Szasz contends that the term actually functions as a euphemism for problems in living, as an excuse for crime and misbehaviour,... (more)
The manufacture of madness: A comparative study of the inquisition and the mental health movement
Every age labels people and consigns them to a particular fate - such as the witch consigned to the fire. The priest has now been replaced by the psychiatrist. This text examines the role of medicine... (more)
Pain and pleasure
368 pages.
Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts and Pushers
In this polemical response to the controversy about drug use and drug criminalization, Thomas Szasz suggests that governments have overstepped their bounds in labelling and prohibiting certain drugs... (more)
Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared
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.... (more)
Suicide Prohibition: The Shame of Medicine
'Another masterpiece. Szasz has produced a strong philosophical, psychiatric, forensic, sociological, and ethical analysis of suicide. I emphasize sociological, as it is a worthy heir to Durkheim’s... (more)