Thomas Stephen Szasz

"The vast literature on Virginia Woolf's life, work and marriage falls into two groups. A large majority is certain that she was mentally ill, and a small minority is equally certain that she was not mentally ill but was misdiagnosed by psychiatrists. In this daring exploration of Woolf's life and work, Thomas Szasz examines the evidence and rejects both views. Instead, he looks at how Virginia Woolf, as well as her husband Leonard, used the concept of madness and the profession of psychiatry to manage and manipulate their own and each other's lives." "Szasz argues that Virginia Woolf was a victim neither of mental illness, nor psychiatry, nor her husband - three ways she is regularly portrayed. He finds her to be an intelligent and self-assertive person, a moral agent who used mental illness, psychiatry, and her husband to fashion for herself a life of her own choosing. Szasz interprets Virginia Woolf's life and work as expressions of her character, and her character as the "product" of her free will."--Jacket.

"One of the most troubling issues we face today is who should control when and how we die. Fatal Freedom is an eloquent defense of every individual's right to choose a voluntary death. Thomas Szasz, a psychiatrist, believes that we can speak about suicide calmly and rationally, as he does in this book, and that we can ultimately accept suicide as part of the human condition. By maintaining statutes that determine that voluntary death is not legal, our society is forfeiting one of its basic freedoms and causing the psychiatric/medical establishment to treat individuals in a manner that is disturbingly inhumane. His work asks and clearly, intelligently answers some of the most significant ethical questions of our time: Is suicide a voluntary act or an act of mental illness? Should physicians be permitted to prevent it? Should they be authorized to abet it?"--BOOK JACKET.

In The Meaning of Mind, Thomas Szasz argues that only as a verb does the word "mind" name something in the real world, namely, attending or heeding. Minding is the ability to pay attention and adapt to one's environment by using language to communicate with others and oneself. Viewing the "mind" as a potentially infinite variety of self-conversations is the key that unlocks many of the mysteries we associate with this concept. Modern neuroscience is a misdirected effort to explain "mind" in terms of brain functions. The claims and conclusions of the diverse academics and scientists who engage in this enterprise undermine the concepts of moral agency and personal responsibility. Szasz shows that the cognitive function of speech is to enable us to talk not only to others but to ourselves (in short, to be our own interlocutor) and that the view that mind is brain - embraced by both the scientific community and the popular press - is not an empirical finding but a rhetorical ruse concealing humanity's unceasing struggle to control persons by controlling their vocabulary. The discourse of brain-mind, unlike the discourse of man as moral agent, protects people from the dilemmas intrinsic to holding themselves responsible for their own actions and holding others responsible for theirs. Because we live in an age blessed by the fruits of materialist science, reductionist explanations of the relationship between brain and mind are more popular than ever, making this book an indispensable addition to the seemingly recondite debate about, simply, who we are.

Cruel Compassion is the capstone of Thomas Szasz's critique of psychiatric practices. Reexamining psychiatric interventions from a cultural-historical and political-economic perspective, Szasz demonstrates that the main problem that faces mental health policy makers today is adult dependency. Millions of Americans, diagnosed as mentally ill, are drugged and confined by doctors for noncriminal conduct, go legally unpunished for the crimes they commit, and are supported by the state - not because they are sick, but because they are unproductive and unwanted. Obsessed with the twin beliefs that misbehavior is a medical disorder and that the duty of the state is to protect adults from themselves, we have replaced criminal-punitive sentences with civil-therapeutic 'programs.' The result is the relentless loss of individual liberty, erosion of personal responsibility, and destruction of the security of persons and property - symptoms of the transformation of a Constitutional Republic into a Therapeutic State, unconstrained by the rule of law. Szasz shows convincingly that not until we separate therapy from coercion - much as the founders separated theology from coercion - shall we be able to get a handle on our seemingly intractable psychiatric and social problems. No contemporary thinker has done more than Thomas Szasz to expose the myths and misconceptions surrounding insanity and the practice of psychiatry. Now, in Cruel Compassion, he gives us a sobering look at some of our most cherished notions about our humane treatment of society's unwanted, and perhaps more importantly, about ourselves as a compassionate and democratic people.

"In Our Right to Drugs, Thomas Szasz shows that our present drug war started at the beginning of this century, when the U.S. government first assumed the task of protecting people from patent medicines. By the end of World War I, however, the free market in drugs was but a dim memory, if that. Instead of dwelling on the familiar impracticality or unfairness of our drug laws, Szasz demonstrates the deleterious effects of prescription laws, which place people under lifelong medical tutelage. The result is that most Americans today prefer a coercive and corrupt command drug economy to a free market in drugs." "Szasz stresses the consequences of the fateful transformation of the central aim of U.S. drug prohibitions from protecting us from being fooled by "misbranded" drugs to protecting us from harming ourselves by self-medication-defined as "drug abuse." And he reminds us that the choice between self-control and state coercion applies to all areas of our lives, drugs being but one of the theaters in which this perennial play may be staged. A free society, Szasz emphasizes, cannot endure if its citizens reject the values of self-discipline and personal responsibility and if the state treats adults as if they were naughty children." "In a no-holds-barred examination of the implementation of the War on Drugs, Szasz shows that under the guise of protecting the vulnerable members of our society--especially children, minorities, and the sick--our government has persecuted and injured them. Leading politicians persuade parents to denounce their children, and encourage children to betray their parents and friends--behavior that subverts family loyalties and destroys basic human decency. And instead of protecting blacks and Hispanics from dangerous drugs, this holy war has allowed us to persecute them, not as racists but as therapists--working selflessly to bring about a drug-free America." "Last, but not least, to millions of sick Americans, the War on Drugs has meant being deprived of the medicines they need--because the drugs are illegal, are unapproved here though approved abroad, or require a prescription a physician may be afraid to provide. The bizarre upshot of our drug policy is that while many Americans now believe they have a right to die--an inevitable occurrence--few believe they have a right to drugs, even though that does not mean they have to take any." "Often jolting, always stimulating, Our Right to Drugs is likely to have the same explosive effect on our ideas about drugs and drug laws as The Myth of Mental Illness had on our ideas about insanity and psychiatry more than thirty years ago."--Jacket.

Chiefly reprints of articles originally published 1965-1983. Includes bibliographies and index.

"The complete list of the works of Thomas S. Szasz": p. 237-253.

xxi, 290 p. ; 21 cm