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The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement

Book by Thomas Szasz · 3 quotes · Concepts, Homosexuality, Illness

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The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement Quotes

“My contention is that the psychiatric perspective on homosexuality is but a thinly disguised replica of the religious perspective which it displaced, and that efforts to 'treat' this kind of conduct medically are but thinly disguised methods for suppressing it.”

“So long as men denounce each other as mentally sick (homosexual, addicted, insane, and so forth) so that the madman can always be considered the Other, never the Self mental illness will remain an easily exploitable concept, and Coercive Psychiatry a flourishing institution.”

“Institutional psychiatry is a continuation of the Inquisition. All that has really changed is the vocabulary and the social style. The vocabulary conforms to the intellectual expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-medical jargon that parodies the concepts of science. The social style conforms to the political expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-liberal social movement that parodies the ideals of freedom and rationality.”