The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct

by Thomas Szasz

Book Overview

"The landmark book that argued that psychiatry consistently expands its definition of mental illness to impose its authority over moral and cultural conflict." -- New York Times

The 50th anniversary edition of the most influential critique of psychiatry every written, with a new preface on the age of Prozac and Ritalin and the rise of designer drugs, plus two bonus essays.

Thomas Szasz's classic...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061771228
• ISBN13: 9780061771224
• Release Date: February 2010
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Coping Vs. Illness

Now, well into my seventh decade of close, (obviously nonprofessional) dealings with a variety of persons with diagnosed/diagnosable "/mental illness/;" and eleven years after my first reading of Myth...; and reading and taking value from 40 relevant books by the following, I take further instruction from Szasz's knowledge, authority and sensibility: Anon(OCD), Amador,X, BacklarP, Breggin,P, "RoyC"(OCD), Davis,L, Engel,B, Feingold,B, Flach,F, Forward,S, Fumento,M, Glasser,W, Glenmullen,J, Gorman,J, Gottesman,I, Grossman,F, Harvey,P, Hedaya,R, Keefe,R, Landau,E, McKee,W, Miller,A, Moskovitz,R, Papalos, Paris,J, Perlmutter,A, Pfeiffer,C, Podvoll,E, Richette,L, Rosen,L, Sacks,O, Salzman,L, Torrey,EF, Walker,S, Wyden,P & B. Some quotes: "I wish...to reintroduce freedom, choice and responsibility into the conceptual framework and vocabulary of psychiatry." "Mental illness is not something a person has, but is something he does or is." "...little doubt...that both Freud and Sullivan were correct in identifying painful memories, their repression, and their persistent operation, as significant antecedents in the personal and social behavior of hysterically disabled individuals." "An integral part of this scientific ethic is the principle that knowledge...must not...be kept a secret by a small group and used as a source of power to mystify and control, stupefy and dominate, other individuals or groups." "It is important to understand clearly that modern psychiatry - and the identification of new psychiatric diseases - began not by identifying such diseases by means of established methods of pathology, but by creating a new criterion of what constitutes disease." "The reclassification of non-illnesses as illnesses has, of course, been of special value to physicians and to psychiatry as a profession and social institution. The prestige and power of psychiatrists have been inflated by defining ever more phenomena as falling within the purview of their discipline." "The phenomenology of body illness is indeed independent of the socioeconomic and political character of the society in which it occurs. But this is emphatically not true for the phenomenology of so-called mental illness, whose manifestations depend upon and vary with the educational, economic, religious, social, and political character of the individual and society in which it occurs." "...To exhibit, by means of bodily signs - say, by paralyses or convulsions - the idea and message that one is sick is at once more impressive and more informative than simply saying: `I am sick.'" "(Some) religious teachings...reward sickness and stupidity, poverty and timidity - in short, disabilities of all sorts..." "...the sick person is entitled to help simply because he is sick..." "...the obligatory nature of the care required generates a feeling of helplessness in the person from whom help is sought. If a person cannot, in good conscience, refuse to provide help - and cannot even stipulat

A Myth Indeed

Descriptive criteria aside, what is the essence of mental disorders? Are they merely physiological disorders of the brain, or, more precisely of its chemistry? If so, can they be cured by restoring the balance of substances and secretions in that mysterious organ? And, once equilibrium is reinstated - is the illness "gone" or is it still lurking there, "under wraps", waiting to erupt? Are psychiatric problems inherited, rooted in faulty genes (though amplified by environmental factors) - or brought on by abusive or wrong nurturance?These questions are the domain of the "medical" school of mental health.Others cling to the spiritual view of the human psyche. They believe that mental ailments amount to the metaphysical discomposure of an unknown medium - the soul. Theirs is a holistic approach, taking in the patient in his or her entirety, as well as his milieu.The members of the functional school regard mental health disorders as perturbations in the proper, statistically "normal", behaviours and manifestations of "healthy" individuals, or as dysfunctions. The "sick" individual - ill at ease with himself (ego-dystonic) or making others unhappy (deviant) - is "mended" when rendered functional again by the prevailing standards of his social and cultural frame of reference.In a way, the three schools are akin to the trio of blind men who render disparate descriptions of the very same elephant. Still, they share not only their subject matter - but, to a counter intuitively large degree, a faulty methodology.As the renowned anti-psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz, of the State University of New York, notes in his article "The Lying Truths of Psychiatry", mental health scholars, regardless of academic predilection, infer the etiology of mental disorders from the success or failure of treatment modalities.This form of "reverse engineering" of scientific models is not unknown in other fields of science, nor is it unacceptable if the experiments meet the criteria of the scientific method. The theory must be all-inclusive (anamnetic), consistent, falsifiable, logically compatible, monovalent, and parsimonious. Psychological "theories" - even the "medical" ones (the role of serotonin and dopamine in mood disorders, for instance) - are usually none of these things.The outcome is a bewildering array of ever-shifting mental health "diagnoses" expressly centred around Western civilisation and its standards (example: the ethical objection to suicide). Neurosis, a historically fundamental "condition" vanished after 1980. Homosexuality, according to the American Psychiatric Association, was a pathology prior to 1973. Seven years later, narcissism was declared a "personality disorder", almost seven decades after it was first described by Freud.Szasz is the father of the "anti psychiatry" movement and this is his best book - a riveting, mind boggling,scholarly read. Sam Vaknin, author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited".

The Myth Revisited

Dr. Szasz'definitive work should be revisited by all mental health professionals in this new era of "managed care" and its resultant "new mental health system". Although I don't agree with everything that Dr. Szasz claimed in his groundbreaking book, it seems to me that those who considered him a quack and continued the medical model of mental illness for the last 4+ decades have not proven him wrong. We have miserably failed the "mentally ill", "mentally disordered", people with "problems in living", or whatever term one uses these days. The mental health system and its providers these days use the excuse of managed care to explain its failures, but would be better advised to read or reread Dr. Szasz's forewarning of 40 years ago. It is time to rethink the problem, and a good place to start is with the "Myth of Mental Illness"-before the death of the mental health system is upon us.

Fascinating and Superb

Superb and fascinating. One of the most logical and outstanding works in psychiatry I've read in a long long time. Believable and academically shattering. I don't undertand some the comments in these reviews but I can tell you that the suppositions and the theories are accurate. Absolutely superb work that deserves serious attention and critical analysis.