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Thomas Szasz

Thomas Szasz Quotes

Psychiatrist

Thomas Szasz, born on April 15, 1920 in Hungary, was a renowned American psychiatrist, writer, and philosopher. He is known for his critical views on psychiatry and liberalism, particularly his skepticism about the nature of mental illness and his emphasis on individual freedom.

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Famous Thomas Szasz Quotes

“We shall therefore compare the concept of homosexuality as heresy, prevalent in the days of the witch-hunts, with the concept of homosexuality as mental illness, prevalent today.”

Today Concepts Illness Mental Illness Compare Witch Homosexuality Hunts Heresy Witch Hunt

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

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

“By pretending that convention is Nature, that disobeying a personal prohibition is a medical illness, they establish themselves as agents of social control and at the same time disguise their punitive interventions in the semantic and social trappings of medical practice.”

Social Practice Illness Medical Agents Pretending Conventions Disguise Intervention Prohibition Social Control Disobeying

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

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

“The disease concept of homosexuality as with the disease concept of all so-called mental illnesses, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, or suicide conceals the fact that homosexuals are a group of medically stigmatized and socially persecuted individuals. ... Their anguished cries of protest are drowned out by the rhetoric of therapy just as the rhetoric of salvation drowned out the [cries] of heretics.”

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

“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.”

Men Long Self Concepts Sick Institutions Illness Mental Illness Insane Homosexual Psychiatry Madmen Flourishing

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

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

“Mental illness, of course, is not literally a "thing" - or physical object - and hence it can "exist" only in the same sort of way in which other theoretical concepts exist.”

Way Courses Objects Concepts Illness Mental Illness Theoretical Bipolar Mentally Ill

Author:Thomas Szasz

“There is no such thing as mental illness, hence also no such thing as psychotherapy.”

Illness Mental Illness Psychotherapy

Author:Thomas Szasz

“No further evidence is needed to show that 'mental illness' is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to be elucidated, but is the name of a concept whose purpose is to obscure the obvious.”

Shows Purpose Names Nature Conditions Needed Concepts Evidence Illness Obvious Mental Illness Obscure

Book:Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary

Source: Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary

“'Psychotherapy' is a private, confidential conversation that has nothing to do with illness, medicine, or healing.”

Healing Conversation Medicine Illness Psychotherapy Confidential

Author:Thomas Szasz

“We achieve active mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick and the dying to hospitals. But hospitals serve the convenience of staff not patients: we cannot be properly ill in a hospital, nor die in one decently; we can do so only among those who love and value us. The result is the institutionalized dehumanization of the ill, characteristic of our age.”

“The Greeks distinguished between good and bad behavior, language that enhanced or diminished persons. Being intoxicated with scientism, we fail to recognize that the seemingly technical terms used to identify psychiatric illnesses and interventions are simply dyphemisms and euphemisms.”

Persons Used Language Term Failing Behavior Illness Greek Intervention Good And Bad Distinguished Scientism Intoxicated Psychiatric Euphemism Bad Behavior

Author:Thomas Szasz

“Mental illness is a myth, whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations.”

Humans Moral Conflict Function Relation Illness Myth Mental Illness Bitter Disguise Pills Psychoanalysis Human Relations

Book:Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary

Source: Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary