Editing Thomas Szasz (section)

===Separate psychiatry and the state===

Szasz believed that if we accept that "mental illness" is a euphemism for behaviors that are disapproved of, then the state has no right to force psychiatric "treatment" on these individuals. Similarly, the state should not be able to interfere in mental health practices between consenting adults (for example, by legally controlling the supply of [[psychotropic drug]]s or psychiatric medication). The [[medicalization]] of government produces a "therapeutic state", designating someone as, for example, "insane" or as a "drug addict".

In ''Ceremonial Chemistry'' (1974), he argued that the same persecution that targeted [[witch-hunt|witches]], Jews, [[Romani people|gypsies]], and homosexuals now targets "drug addicts" and "insane" people. Szasz argued that all these categories of people were taken as scapegoats of the community in ritual ceremonies. To underscore this continuation of religion through medicine, he even takes as an example [[obesity]]: instead of concentrating on [[junk food]] (ill-nutrition), physicians denounced hypernutrition. According to Szasz, despite their scientific appearance, the diets imposed were a moral substitute to the former [[fasting|fasts]], and the social injunction ''not to be overweight'' is to be considered as a moral order, not as scientific advice as it claims to be. As with those thought bad (insane people), and those who took the wrong drugs (drug addicts), medicine created a category for those who had the wrong weight (obesity).

Szasz argued that psychiatrics were created in the 17th century to study and control those who erred from the medical norms of social behavior; a new specialization, "drogophobia", was created in the 20th century to study and control those who erred from the medical norms of drug consumption; and then, in the 1960s, another specialization, [[bariatrics]] (from the Greek βάρος ''baros,'' for "weight"), was created to deal with those who erred from the medical norms concerning the weight the body should have. Thus, he underscores that in 1970 the American Society of Bariatric Physicians had 30 members, and already 450 two years later.{{citation needed|date=March 2019}}

====The therapeutic state====

The "therapeutic state" is a phrase coined by Szasz in 1963.<ref name=Baker>{{cite journal|last=Baker|first=Robert|author-link=Robert A. Baker|title=Psychiatry's Gentleman Abolitionist|journal=The Independent Review|date=Winter 2003|volume=VII|issue=3|pages=455–460|url=http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_07_3_baker.pdf|access-date=February 12, 2012|issn=1086-1653|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190410081714/http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_07_3_baker.pdf|archive-date=April 10, 2019|url-status=live}}</ref> The collaboration between psychiatry and government leads to what Szasz calls the ''therapeutic state'', a system in which disapproved actions, thoughts, and emotions are repressed ("cured") through pseudomedical interventions.<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://reason.com/archives/2000/07/01/curing-the-therapeutic-state-t |journal=Reason Magazine |title=Curing the Therapeutic State: Thomas Szasz interviewed by Jacob Sullum |author=Jacob Sullum |date=July 2000 |pages=28 ''et seq.'' |access-date=2015-07-15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140114112507/http://reason.com/archives/2000/07/01/curing-the-therapeutic-state-t |archive-date=2014-01-14 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name=Costigan>{{cite book|last=Costigan|first=Lucy|title=Social Awareness in Counseling|year=2004|publisher=iUniverse|isbn=978-0-595-75523-3|page=17|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wfCesrlvK-gC&pg=PA17|access-date=2015-06-20|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140101161637/http://books.google.com/books?id=wfCesrlvK-gC&pg=PA17|archive-date=2014-01-01|url-status=live}}</ref>{{rp|17}} Thus suicide, unconventional religious beliefs, racial bigotry, unhappiness, anxiety, shyness, sexual promiscuity, shoplifting, gambling, overeating, smoking, and illegal drug use are all considered symptoms or illnesses that need to be cured.<ref name=Costigan/>{{rp|17}} When faced with demands for measures to curtail smoking in public, binge-drinking, gambling or obesity, ministers say that "we must guard against charges of nanny statism."<ref name="Fitzpatrick">{{cite journal|last=Fitzpatrick|first=Mike|title=From 'nanny state' to 'therapeutic state'|journal=[[The British Journal of General Practice]]|date=August 2004|volume=1|issue=54(505)|page=645|pmc=1324868|pmid=15517694}}</ref> The "[[nanny state]]" has turned into the "therapeutic state" where nanny has given way to counselor.<ref name=Fitzpatrick/> Nanny just told people what to do; counselors also tell them what to think and what to feel.<ref name=Fitzpatrick/> The "nanny state" was punitive, austere, and authoritarian, the therapeutic state is touchy-feely, supportive – and even more authoritarian.<ref name=Fitzpatrick/>

According to Szasz, "the therapeutic state swallows up everything human on the seemingly rational ground that nothing falls outside the province of health and medicine, just as the theological state had swallowed up everything human on the perfectly rational ground that nothing falls outside the province of God and religion."<ref name="Szasz, 2001">{{cite journal|last=Szasz|first=Thomas|title=The Therapeutic State: The Tyranny of Pharmacracy|journal=[[The Independent Review]]|date=Spring 2001|volume=V|issue=4|pages=485–521|url=http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_05_4_szasz.pdf|access-date=January 20, 2012|issn=1086-1653|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120214211148/http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_05_4_szasz.pdf|archive-date=February 14, 2012|url-status=live}}</ref>{{rp|515}} Faced with the problem of "madness", Western individualism proved to be ill-prepared to defend the rights of the individual: modern man has no more right to be a madman than medieval man had a right to be a heretic because if once people agree that they have identified the one true God, or Good, it brings about that they have to guard members and nonmembers of the group from the temptation to worship false gods or goods.<ref name="Szasz, 2001"/>{{rp|496}} A secularization of God and the medicalization of good resulted in the post-[[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] version of this view: once people agree that they have identified the one true reason, it brings about that they have to guard against the temptation to worship unreason – that is, madness.<ref name="Szasz, 2001"/>{{rp|496}}

[[Civil libertarians]] warn that the marriage of the state with psychiatry could have catastrophic consequences for civilization.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0411b.asp|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20060115054600/http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0411b.asp|url-status=dead |title=Bush's Brave New World |first=Sheldon |last=Richman |date=March 4, 2005 |archivedate=January 15, 2006}}</ref> In the same vein as the [[separation of church and state]], Szasz believes that a solid wall must exist between psychiatry and the state.<ref name="Szasz, 2001"/>