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“Electric shock treatment is paradigmatic of the interventions of Institutional Psychiatry; based on force and fraud, and justified by "medical necessity," the prime purpose of psychiatric treatments — whether utilizing drugs, electricity, surgery or confinement, especially if imposed on unconsenting clients-is to authenticate the subject as a "patient," the psychiatrist as a "doctor," and the intervention as a form of "treatment." The cost of this fictionalization runs high: it requires the sacrifice of the patient as a person; of the psychiatrist as a critical thinker and moral agent; and of the legal system as a protector of the citizen from the abuse of state power.” — Thomas Szasz
Electric shock treatment is paradigmatic of the interventions of Institutional Psychiatry; based on force and fraud, and justified by "medical necessity," the prime purpose of psychiatric treatments — whether utilizing drugs, electricity, surgery or confinement, especially if imposed on unconsenting clients-is to authenticate the subject as a "patient," the psychiatrist as a "doctor," and the intervention as a form of "treatment." The cost of this fictionalization runs high: it requires the sacrifice of the patient as a person; of the psychiatrist as a critical thinker and moral agent; and of the legal system as a protector of the citizen from the abuse of state power.