Editing Thomas Szasz (section)

==Career==

Thomas Szasz was a strong critic of institutional psychiatry and was a prolific writer. According to psychiatrist Tony B. Benning, there were "three major themes in Szasz's writings: his contention that there is no such thing as mental illness, his contention that individual responsibility is never compromised in those suffering from what is generally considered as mental illness, and his perennial interest in calling attention to the political nature of psychiatric diagnosis".{{r|benning}} According to Williams and Caplan, Szasz is "best known for his view that without a diagnosis of neurological disease or damage, a psychiatric diagnosis was meaningless".{{r|williams and caplan}} Though his ideas had little influence on mainstream psychiatry, many were supported by some behavioral and social scientists.{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}}

Szasz first presented his attack on "mental illness" as a legal term in 1958 in the ''[[Columbia Law Review]]''. In his article he argued that mental illness was no more a fact bearing on a suspect's guilt than is [[demonic possession|possession by the devil]].<ref name=Oliver/><ref name="SzaszCLR">{{Cite journal|last=Szasz|first=Thomas|date=February 1958|title=Psychiatry, Ethics, and the Criminal Law|url=https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/clr58&i=229|journal=Columbia Law Review|volume=58|issue=2|pages=183–198|doi=10.2307/1119827|jstor=1119827|access-date=2020-07-14|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190327090555/https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals%2Fclr58&i=229|archive-date=2019-03-27|url-status=live}}</ref>

His books ''[[The Myth of Mental Illness]]'' (1961) and ''The Manufacture of Madness'' (1970) set out some of the arguments most associated with him.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Rosen |first=Jonathan |date=2023-07-19 |title=Quadruplets With Schizophrenia? Researchers Were Confounded. |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/books/review/girls-and-their-monsters-audrey-clare-farley.html |access-date=2023-09-19 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
In 1961, Szasz testified before a [[United States Senate committee]], arguing that using mental hospitals to incarcerate people defined as insane violated the general assumptions of the patient–doctor relationship, and turned the doctor into a warden and keeper of a prison.<ref name=Oliver/> 

Szasz was convinced there was a [[metaphor]]ical character to mental disorders, and its uses in psychiatry were frequently injurious. He set himself a task to delegitimize legitimating agencies and authorities, and what he saw as their vast powers, enforced by psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, mental health laws, mental health courts, and mental health sentences.<ref name=Phillips>{{cite journal|last=Phillips|first=James|title=The Six Most Essential Questions in Psychiatric Diagnosis: A Pluralogue. Part 1: Conceptual and Definitional Issues in Psychiatric Diagnosis|date=January 13, 2012|volume=7|issue=3|pages=3|doi=10.1186/1747-5341-7-3|pmid=22243994|pmc=3305603|journal=Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine|display-authors=etal |doi-access=free }}</ref>{{rp|22}}

Szasz was a critic of the influence of modern medicine on society, which he considered to be the [[secularization]] of religion's hold on humankind. Criticizing [[scientism]], he targeted psychiatry in particular, underscoring its campaigns against [[masturbation]] at the end of the 19th century, its use of medical imagery and language to describe misbehavior, its reliance on involuntary mental hospitalization to protect society, and the use of [[lobotomy]] and other interventions to treat [[psychosis]].{{citation needed|date=September 2024}}
Szasz consistently paid attention to the power of language in the establishment and maintenance of the social order, both in small interpersonal and in wider social, economic, and/or political spheres.{{citation needed|date=September 2024}}