50 years ago Thomas Szasz rocked the world of psychiatry: The difference between a disease and a disorder

By Dr. Jeffrey Schaler
Assistant Professor of Justice, Law & Society

The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas SzaszIt is fifty years now since Thomas Szasz rocked the world of psychiatry by writing The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct. His work continues to have a profound impact on how we think about disease, behavior, liberty, justice, responsibility, and most important of all, what it means to be human.  Szasz has shown us how the idea of mental illness is used by the state to deprive innocent people of freedom, and guilty persons of justice.  Without the state involved, the medicalization of behavior means nothing.

He has shown us how the idea of mental illness functions as legal fiction within our legal system. In this sense, the idea of mental illness has been used much as the idea that African American slaves were considered three-fifths of a person. Persons labeled as mentally ill are now considered three-fifths of a person. It is as if there was a postscript at the bottom of the Bill of Rights that reads: “PS: For mentally healthy people only.”

The courts will not allow the idea of mental illness to be disproved, in much the same way that the idea that slaves could be three-fifths person was not allowed to be disproved. Today, mental illness as legal fiction maintains the institution of psychiatric slavery.

The Theraputic State by Thomas SzaszMental illness diagnoses have more to do with politics and science fiction, than medicine and science. Take for example the idea that people with a homosexual orientation are mentally ill. The category was excluded from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – our contemporary “Malleus Maleficorum,” or “Hammer of Witches” – the same way it was included, for political reasons, not scientific reasons. No one discovered that homosexuality was a disease, and no one discovered that it isn't a disease. They pronounced it as such, in each case, because of political pressure.

About two years after The Myth of Mental Illness was first published, Szasz published another book that has had an equally profound impact on freedom and responsibility. In Law, Liberty and Psychiatry he predicted the following:

“Although we may not know it, we have, in our day, witnessed the birth of the Therapeutic State. This is perhaps the major implication of psychiatry as an institution of social control.”

Thomas Szasz wrote that in 1963.

We live in a Therapeutic State today. Moral management now masquerades as medicine. The state dictates a “duty to be healthy.”

Seventy years ago another state, Nazi Germany, dictated a “duty to be healthy.” Back then, murder masqueraded as medicine. I think you all know what I'm referring to. We don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Today, good health practices have become a social responsibility. Bad health practices are viewed as socially irresponsible behavior. When health and illness are applied to the mind and behavior, this means that people must think and speak and act the right way. Otherwise, they may end up in a prison called a mental hospital.

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Cathy O'Brien speaks on mind control

Cathy O'Brien speaks of her CIA mind control existence and how these programs were and are being perpetrated under the illegal 1947 National Security Act even today.

CIA officer- Robert Steele stresses the importance of blogging

This is a follow up montage to those who say Bloggers and making videos (Vloggers) and those who comment, are not making a difference.

Bordaberry condemned for 1973 coup

For the first time in Latin America, a judge has sent a former head of state to prison for the crime of an "Attack against the Constitution." In an unprecedented ruling last month in Montevideo, former Uruguayan President Juan María Bordaberry was sentenced to serve 30 years for undermining Uruguay's constitution through an auto-coup on June 27, 1973, and for being a participant in nine disappearances and two political assassinations committed by the security forces while he was president between 1972 and 1976.

Declassified U.S. documents provided as evidence in the case by the National Security Archive show Bordaberry as justifying his seizure of extra-constitutional powers on June 27, 1973, by telling the U.S. Ambassador that "Uruguay's democratic traditions and institutions... were themselves the real threat to democracy." Another document, written within days after the coup, shows that the police were ordered to launch, in coordination with the military, "intelligence gathering and operations of a 'special' nature"--references to death squad actions that ensued.

"These declassified U.S. documents," said Carlos Osorio, who heads the National Security Archive's Southern Cone project, "helped the Court open the curtain of secrecy on human rights crimes committed during Bordaberry's reign of power."

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One of the most curious features of the neoconservative...

How to Disappear Completely by Eric Martin

One of the most curious features of the neoconservative political/philosophical movement is the near reflexive, compulsive tendency on the part of its adherents to conceal the full breadth of their positions, beliefs and ideological moorings. It's like they fear truth as a matter of course.  The first most extreme example of this pattern probably came when David Brooks tried to claim that there was, actually, no such thing as a neoconservative in the first place (just a crude form of anti-Semitic classification). Though ultimately unsuccessful, Brooks' Copperfield-esque attempt to make the entire neoconservative movement disappear from sight would have made a lot of subsequent small-bore efforts at subterfuge unnecessary.

Speaking of those lesser sleights of hand, Michael Ledeen is probably the most prolific in terms of comical self contradiction. As I've documented over the past years, Ledeen has a peculiar tic whereby he pens impassioned calls for military confrontation with Iran, but then claims- with a straight face - that he opposes any such use of force. Perhaps emboldened by his own perceived success in terms of Iran-related duplicity, Ledeen took it one step further and actually claimed, against the weight of the evidence, that back in 2002 he opposed the invasion of Iraq!  The audacity of that attempt alone secures his status as my favorite hawk in dove's feathers. few 

The attempts to conceal their policy proposals - and identities - are understandable on some level. The total war agenda outlined in prominent neoconservative texts such as Norman Podhoretz's dream of World War IV, and Richard Perle and David Frum's An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, is shocking in its unrestrained bellicosity - each advocating for a series of wars with Iraq being just the first, brief pit stop.  Further, when their ideology has been put in practice under the stewardship of its practitioners, as in Iraq, the results have been so utterly disastrous that one can appreciate the desire to create distance. If I were a neocon, I'd sure want to pretend I wasn't.

If Richard Perle's recent statements are any indicator, the desperation in the neoconservatives camp is palpable.  Perle, it seems, is returning to the David Brooks playbook: trying to, again, convince the world that there's no such thing as a neoconservative.  Dana Millbank (via Steve Benen):

"There is no such thing as a neoconservative foreign policy," Perle informed the gathering, hosted by National Interest magazine. "It is a left critique of what is believed by the commentator to be a right-wing policy."

So what about the 1996 report he co-authored that is widely seen as the cornerstone of neoconservative foreign policy? "My name was on it because I signed up for the study group," Perle explained. "I didn't approve it. I didn't read it."

Mm-hmm. And the two letters to the president, signed by Perle, giving a "moral" basis to Middle East policy and demanding military means to remove Saddam Hussein? "I don't have the letters in front of me," Perle replied.

Right. And the Bush administration National Security Strategy, enshrining the neoconservative themes of preemptive war and using American power to spread freedom? "I don't know whether President Bush ever read any of those statements," Perle maintained. "My guess is he didn't."

Benen adds:

It was apparently quite a performance, which literally drew laughter when Perle insisted, "I've never advocated attacking Iran." He added that he doesn't "accept" the notion that there's even a "neoconservative school of thought," and said his book, "An End to Evil," is actually a text devoted to realism.

Not even a "neoconservative school of thought"?  Maybe Perle should consult with Irving Kristol, whose 1995 book is entitled, Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea.  Or maybe The Neoconservative Imagination: Essays in Honor of Irving Kristol, a compilation edited by William Kristol, another non-neo-con.  Or NeoConservatism: Why We Need It and The Neocon Reader.  Or Joshua Muravchik who wrote an essay a few years back on how to save a school of thought that is...apparently a figment of our collective imaginations? 

Oh, and give Muravchik credit for openness:

Make no mistake, President Bush will need to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities before leaving office.

But don't be surprised when at some point in the future he confidently assures the reader of his longstanding - and well known - opposition to bombing Iran.

~ Source: Obsidian Wings ~