The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement
by Thomas Szasz
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Description
Every age, labels others to a particular fate, such as the witch consigned to the fire. The priest has now been replaced by the psychiatrist and this text examines the role of medicine as a more insidious tyrant than religion, as it claims to be beneficial to both the patient and the commonwealth.Tags
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It's so wonderful when you come across a clear-thinking honest man. And you can always tell how close they've come to the mark by the cries of outrage they engender. Szasz lays the psychiatric game on a butcher's block and gives it a great and well-deserved whack. This is the kind of book I look for. Truths are so hard to come by in this world.
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Author Information
59+ Works 2,422 Members
Thomas Szasz is professor emeritus of psychiatry at the State University of New York's Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York.
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1970
- Epigraph
- The purpose of this essay is ... an attempt to understand the times in which we live. One might think that a period which, in a space of fifty years, uproots, enslaves, or kills seventy million human beings should be condemn... (show all)ed out of hand. But its culpability must still be understood. In more ingenuous times, when the tyrant razed cities for his own greater glory, when the slave chained to the conqueror's chariot was dragged through the rejoicing streets, when enemies were thrown to the wild beasts in front of the assembled people, the mind did not reel before such unabashed crimes, and judgment remained unclouded. But slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or by the the taste for the superhuman, in one sense cripple judgment. On the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence -- through a curious transposition peculiar to our times -- it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself.
--Albert Camus - Dedication
- To my daughter, Suzy
- First words
- (Preface): It is widely believed today that just as some people suffer from diseases of the liver or kidney, others suffer from diseases of the mind or personality; that persons afflicted with such "mental illnesses" are psy... (show all)chologically and socially inferior to those not so afflicted; and that "mental patient," because of their supposed incapacity to "know what is in their own best interests," must be cared for by their families or the state, even if that care requires interventions imposed upon them against their will or incarceration in a mental hospital.
(Introduction): The concept of mental illness is analogous to that of witchcraft.
In the past, most people believed in sorcery, sympathetic magic, and witchraft. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)And if they are not people, what are they?
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)(Epliogue): To one who believes, as I do, that the physician ought to be a protector of the individual, even when the individual comes into conflict with society, it is especially dismaying that, in our day, the painting of birds has become an accepted medical activity, and that, among the colors used, pyschiatric diagnoses are most in fashion. - Original language*
- Engels
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, History, Religion & Spirituality, Politics and Government
- DDC/MDS
- 362.2042209 — Society, Government, and Culture Social problems and social services Social Welfare Mental illness General overview of mental health services
- LCC
- RC438 .S92 — Medicine Internal medicine Internal medicine Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry Psychiatry
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 296
- Popularity
- 108,096
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.28)
- Languages
- 6 — Dutch, English, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 12
- ASINs
- 9
