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Thomas Stephen Szasz Quotes

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Famous Thomas Stephen Szasz Quotes

“The cruelty intrinsic to the workhouse system was excused by the need to discourage idleness, much as the malice intrinsic to the mental hospital system has been excused by the need to provide treatment.”

Liberty Poverty Mental Illness Insanity Psychiatry Coercion

Book:Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

Source: Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

“Although both home and mental illness are complex, modern ideas, we have fallen into the habit of using phrases such as "housing the homeless" and "treating the mentally ill" as if we knew what counts as housing a homeless person or what it means to treat mental illness. But we do not. We have deceived ourselves that having a home and being mentally healthy are our natural conditions, and that we become homeless or mentally ill as a result of "losing" our homes or our minds. The opposite is the case. We are born without a home and without reason, and have to exert ourselves and are fortunate if we succeed in building a secure home and a sound mind.”

Home Mental Health Mental Illness Homelessness

Book:Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

Source: Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

“The young and the old are defenseless against relatives who want to get rid of them by casting them in the role of mental patient,and against psychiatrists whose livelihood depends on defining them as mentally ill.”

Mental Illness Child Abuse Psychiatry Elder Abuse

Book:Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

Source: Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

“The term 'deinstitutionalization' conceals some simple truths, namely, that old, unwanted persons, formerly housed in state hospitals, are now housed in nursing homes; that young, unwanted persons, formerly also housed in state hospitals, are now housed in prisons or parapsychiatric facilities; and that both groups of inmates are systematically drugged with psychiatric medications.”

Prison Mental Illness Medication Institutionalization Mental Hospitals Deinstitutionalization

Book:Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

Source: Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

“The fatal weakness of most psychiatric historiographies lies in the historians' failure to give sufficient weight to the role of coercion in psychiatry and to acknowledge that mad-doctoring had nothing to do with healing.”

Mental Illness Coercion Historiography Mental Illness Discrimination

Book:Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

Source: Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted