Thomas Szasz

Thomas Stephen Szasz (/sɑːs/ SAHSS; Hungarian: Szász Tamás István [saːs]; 15 April 1920 – 8 September 2012) was a Hungarian-American academic and psychiatrist. He served for most of his career as professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York.^[4] A distinguished lifetime fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a life member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, he was best known as a social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, as what he saw as the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as scientism.

Thomas Szasz
Szász Tamás István
Born	Thomas Stephen Szasz (1920-04-15)April 15, 1920 Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary
Died	September 8, 2012(2012-09-08) (aged 92) Manlius, New York, U.S.^[3]
Citizenship	Hungary, United States
Alma mater	University of Cincinnati
Known for	Criticism of psychiatry
Spouse	Rosine Loshkajian (m. 1951; died 1971)
Children	2
Awards	Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged (1974),^[1] Martin Buber Award (1974), Humanist Laureate Award (1995), Great Lake Association of Clinical Medicine Patients' Rights Advocate Award (1995), American Psychological Association Rollo May Award (1998)^[2]
Scientific career
Fields	Psychiatry
Institutions	State University of New York Upstate Medical University
Website	www.szasz.com

His books The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) and The Manufacture of Madness (1970) set out some of the arguments most associated with him.^[5]

Szasz argued throughout his career that mental illness is a metaphor for human problems in living, and that mental illnesses are not "illnesses" in the sense that physical illnesses are, and that except for a few identifiable brain diseases, there are "neither biological or chemical tests nor biopsy or necropsy findings for verifying DSM diagnoses."^[6]

Szasz maintained throughout his career that he was not anti-psychiatry but rather that he opposed coercive psychiatry. He was a staunch opponent of civil commitment and involuntary psychiatric treatment, but he believed in and practiced psychiatry and psychotherapy between consenting adults.

Life

Szasz was born to Jewish parents Gyula and Lily Szász on April 15, 1920, in Budapest, Hungary. In 1938, Szasz moved to the United States, where he attended the University of Cincinnati for his Bachelor of Science in physics, and received his M.D. from the same university in 1944.^[7] Szasz completed his residency requirement at the Cincinnati General Hospital, then worked at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis from 1951 to 1956, and then for the next five years was a member of its staff – taking 24 months out for duty with the U.S. Naval Reserve.^[8]

In 1962, Szasz received a tenured position in medicine at the State University of New York.^[9] Szasz had first joined SUNY in 1956.

Szasz had two daughters. His wife, Rosine, died in 1971.^[3] Szasz's colleague Jeff Schaler described her death as a suicide.^[10]

Szasz's views of psychiatry were influenced by the writings of Frigyes Karinthy.^[11][12]

Death

Thomas Szasz ended his own life on September 8, 2012. He had previously suffered a fall and would have had to live in chronic pain otherwise. Szasz argued for the right to suicide in his writings.^[10]

Rise of Szasz's arguments

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 possession by the devil.^[9][13]

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.^[9]

Szasz's main arguments

Szasz was convinced there was a metaphorical 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.^[14]: 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. To sum up his description of the political influence of medicine in modern societies imbued by faith in science, he declared:

Since theocracy is the rule of God or its priests, and democracy the rule of the people or of the majority, pharmacracy is therefore the rule of medicine or of doctors.^{[15][page needed]}

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:

The struggle for definition is veritably the struggle for life itself. In the typical Western two men fight desperately for the possession of a gun that has been thrown to the ground: whoever reaches the weapon first shoots and lives; his adversary is shot and dies. In ordinary life, the struggle is not for guns but for words; whoever first defines the situation is the victor; his adversary, the victim. For example, in the family, husband and wife, mother and child do not get along; who defines whom as troublesome or mentally sick?... [the one] who first seizes the word imposes reality on the other; [the one] who defines thus dominates and lives; and [the one] who is defined is subjugated and may be killed.^[16]: 85

His main arguments can be summarized as follows:

"Myth of mental illness"

"Mental illness" is an expression, a metaphor that describes an offending, disturbing, shocking, or vexing conduct, action, or pattern of behavior, such as packaged under the wide-ranging term schizophrenia, as an "illness" or "disease". Szasz wrote: "If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic."^[16]: 85 He maintained that, while people behave and think in disturbing ways, and those ways may resemble a disease process (pain, deterioration, response to various interventions), this does not mean they actually have a disease. To Szasz, disease can only mean something people "have", while behavior is what people "do". Diseases are "malfunctions of the human body, of the heart, the liver, the kidney, the brain" while "no behavior or misbehavior is a disease or can be a disease. That's not what diseases are." Szasz cited drapetomania as an example of a behavior that many in society did not approve of, being labeled and widely cited as a disease. Likewise, women who did not bend to a man's will were said to have hysteria.^[17] He thought that psychiatry actively obscures the difference between behavior and disease in its quest to help or harm parties in conflicts. He maintained that, by calling people diseased, psychiatry attempts to deny them responsibility as moral agents in order to better control them.

In Szasz's view, people who are said by themselves or others to have a mental illness can only have, at best, "problems in living". Diagnoses of "mental illness" or "mental disorder" (the latter expression called by Szasz a "weasel term" for mental illness) are passed off as "scientific categories" but they remain merely judgments (judgments of disdain) to support certain uses of power by psychiatric authorities. In that line of thinking, schizophrenia becomes not the name of a disease entity but a judgment of extreme psychiatric and social disapprobation. Szasz called schizophrenia "the sacred symbol of psychiatry" because those so labeled have long provided and continue to provide justification for psychiatric theories, treatments, abuses, and reforms.

The figure of the psychotic or schizophrenic person to psychiatric experts and authorities, according to Szasz, is analogous with the figure of the heretic or blasphemer to theological experts and authorities. According to Szasz, to understand the metaphorical nature of the term "disease" in psychiatry, one must first understand its literal meaning in the rest of medicine. To be a true disease, the entity must first somehow be capable of being approached, measured, or tested in scientific fashion. Second, to be confirmed as a disease, a condition must demonstrate pathology at the cellular or molecular level.

A genuine disease must also be found on the autopsy table (not merely in the living person) and meet pathological definition instead of being voted into existence by members of the American Psychiatric Association. "Mental illnesses" are really problems in living. They are often "like a" disease, argued Szasz, which makes the medical metaphor understandable, but in no way validates it as an accurate description or explanation. Psychiatry is a pseudoscience that parodies medicine by using medical-sounding words invented especially over the last one hundred years. To be clear, heart break and heart attack, or spring fever and typhoid fever belong to two completely different logical categories, and treating one as the other constitutes a category error. Psychiatrists are the successors of "soul doctors", priests who dealt and deal with the spiritual conundrums, dilemmas, and vexations – the "problems in living" – that have troubled people forever.

Psychiatry's main methods are assessment, medication, conversation or rhetoric and incarceration. To the extent that psychiatry presents these problems as "medical diseases", its methods as "medical treatments", and its clients – especially involuntary – as medically ill patients, it embodies a lie and therefore constitutes a fundamental threat to freedom and dignity. Psychiatry, supported by the state through various Mental Health Acts, has become a modern secular state religion according to Szasz. It is a vastly elaborate social control system, using both brute force and subtle indoctrination, which disguises itself under the claims of being rational, systematic and therefore scientific.

"Patient" as malingerer

According to Szasz, many people fake their presentation of mental illness, i.e., they are malingering. They do so for gain, for example, in order to escape a burden like evading the draft, or to gain access to drugs or financial support, or for some other personally meaningful reason. By definition, the malingerer is knowingly deceitful (although malingering itself has also been called a mental illness or disorder). Szasz mentions malingering in many of his works, but it is not what he has in mind to explain many other manifestations of so-called "mental illness". In those cases, so-called "patients" have something personally significant to communicate – their "problems in living" – but unable to express this via conventional means they resort to illness-imitation behaviour, a somatic protolanguage or "body language", which psychiatrists and psychologists have misguidedly interpreted as the signs/symptoms of real illness.^[18] So, for example, "analyzing the origin of the hysterical protolanguage Szasz states that it has a double origin: – the first root is in the somatic structure of human being. The human body is subject to illnesses and disabilities expressed through somatic signs (like paralysis, convulsions, etc.) and somatic sensations (like pain, tiredness, etc.); – the second root can be found into cultural factors."^[19]

Separation of 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 drugs 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 (1973), he argued that the same persecution that targeted witches, Jews, 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 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]}

Presumption of competence and death control

Just as legal systems work on the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty, individuals accused of crimes should not be presumed incompetent simply because a doctor or psychiatrist labels them as such. Mental incompetence should be assessed like any other form of incompetence, i.e., by purely legal and judicial means with the right of representation and appeal by the accused.

In an analogy to birth control, Szasz argued that individuals should be able to choose when to die without interference from medicine or the state, just as they are able to choose when to conceive without outside interference. He considered suicide to be among the most fundamental rights, but he opposed state-sanctioned euthanasia.

In his 2006 book about Virginia Woolf he stated that she put an end to her life by a conscious and deliberate act, her suicide being an expression of her freedom of choice.^[20][21]

Abolition of the insanity defense and involuntary hospitalization

Szasz believed that testimony about the mental competence of a defendant should not be admissible in trials. Psychiatrists testifying about the mental state of an accused person's mind have about as much business as a priest testifying about the religious state of a person's soul in our courts. Insanity was a legal tactic invented to circumvent the punishments of the Church, which at the time included confiscation of the property of those who committed suicide, often leaving widows and orphans destitute. Only an insane person would do such a thing to his widow and children, it was successfully argued. This is legal mercy masquerading as medicine, according to Szasz.^[22]

No one should be deprived of liberty unless he is found guilty of a criminal offense. Depriving a person of liberty for what is said to be his own good is immoral. Just as a person suffering from terminal cancer may refuse treatment, so should a person be able to refuse psychiatric treatment.

The right to drugs

Drug addiction is not a "disease" to be cured through legal drugs but a social habit. Szasz also argues in favor of a free market for drugs. He criticized the war on drugs, arguing that using drugs is in fact a victimless crime. Prohibition itself constituted the crime. He argued that the war on drugs leads states to do things that would have never been considered half a century before, such as prohibiting a person from ingesting certain substances or interfering in other countries to impede the production of certain plants, e.g. coca eradication plans, or the campaigns against opium; both are traditional plants opposed by the Western world. Although Szasz was skeptical about the merits of psychotropic medications, he favored the repeal of drug prohibition.^[23]

Szasz also drew analogies between the persecution of the drug-using minority and the persecution of Jewish and homosexual minorities.

The Nazis spoke of having a "Jewish problem". We now speak of having a drug-abuse problem. Actually, "Jewish problem" was the name the Germans gave to their persecution of the Jews; "drug-abuse problem" is the name we give to the persecution of people who use certain drugs.^[16]: 64

Szasz cites former U.S. Representative James M. Hanley's reference to drug users as "vermin", using "the same metaphor for condemning persons who use or sell illegal drugs that the Nazis used to justify murdering Jews by poison gas – namely, that the persecuted persons are not human beings, but 'vermin.'"^[24]

Therapeutic state

The "therapeutic state" is a phrase coined by Szasz in 1963.^[25] 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.^{[26][27]: 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.^[27]: 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."^[28] The "nanny state" has turned into the "therapeutic state" where nanny has given way to counselor.^[28] Nanny just told people what to do; counselors also tell them what to think and what to feel.^[28] The "nanny state" was punitive, austere, and authoritarian, the therapeutic state is touchy-feely, supportive – and even more authoritarian.^[28]

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."^[29]: 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.^[29]: 496 A secularization of God and the medicalization of good resulted in the post-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.^[29]: 496

Civil libertarians warn that the marriage of the state with psychiatry could have catastrophic consequences for civilization.^[30] In the same vein as the separation of church and state, Szasz believes that a solid wall must exist between psychiatry and the state.^[29]

American Association for the Abolition of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization

Believing that psychiatric hospitals are like prisons not hospitals and that psychiatrists who subject others to coercion function as judges and jailers not physicians,^[31] Szasz made efforts to abolish involuntary psychiatric hospitalization for over two decades, and in 1970 took a part in founding the American Association for the Abolition of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization (AAAIMH).^[32] Its founding was announced by Szasz in 1971 in the American Journal of Psychiatry^[33] and American Journal of Public Health.^[34] The association provided legal help to psychiatric patients and published a journal, The Abolitionist.^[35]

Relationship to Citizens Commission on Human Rights

In 1969, Szasz and the Church of Scientology co-founded the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) to oppose involuntary psychiatric treatments. Szasz served on CCHR's Board of Advisors as Founding Commissioner.^[36] In the keynote address at the 25th anniversary of CCHR, Szasz stated, "We should all honor CCHR because it is really the organization that for the first time in human history has organized a politically, socially, internationally significant voice to combat psychiatry. This has never been done in human history before."^[37]

In a 2009 interview aired by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Szasz explained his reason for collaborating with CCHR and lack of involvement with Scientology:

Well I got affiliated with an organisation long after I was established as a critic of psychiatry, called Citizens Commission for Human Rights, because they were then the only organisation and they still are the only organisation who had money and had some access to lawyers and were active in trying to free mental patients who were incarcerated in mental hospitals with whom there was nothing wrong, who had committed no crimes, who wanted to get out of the hospital. And that to me was a very worthwhile cause; it's still a very worthwhile cause. I no more believe in their religion or their beliefs than I believe in the beliefs of any other religion. I am an atheist, I don't believe in Christianity, in Judaism, in Islam, in Buddhism and I don't believe in Scientology. I have nothing to do with Scientology.^[38]

Russell Tribunal

In the summer of 2001, Szasz took part in a Russell Tribunal on human rights in psychiatry held in Berlin between June 30 and July 2, 2001.^[39] The tribunal brought in the two following verdicts: the majority verdict claimed that there was "serious abuse of human rights in psychiatry" and that psychiatry was "guilty of the combination of force and unaccountability"; the minority verdict, signed by the Israeli Law Professor Alon Harel and Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho, called for "public critical examination of the role of psychiatry".^[39]

Responses and reactions

Szasz was a strong critic of institutional psychiatry and his publications were very widely read. He argued that so-called mental illnesses had no underlying physiological basis, but were unwanted and unpleasant behaviors. Mental illness, he said, was only a metaphor that described problems that people faced in their daily lives, labeled as if they were medical diseases. Szasz's ideas had little influence on mainstream psychiatry, but were supported by some behavioral and social scientists. Sociologist Erving Goffman, who wrote Asylums: Essays on the Condition of the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, was skeptical about psychiatric practices. He was concerned that the stigma and social rejection associated with psychiatric treatment might harm people. Thomas Scheff, also a sociologist, had similar reservations.^[40]

Kendell's views

Robert Evan Kendell presents (in Schaler, 2005^[41]) a critique of Szasz's conception of disease and the contention that mental illness is "mythical" as presented in The Myth of Mental Illness. Kendell's arguments include the following:

1. Szasz's conception of disease exclusively in terms of "lesion", i.e. morphological abnormality, is arbitrary and his conclusions based on this idea represent special pleading. There are non-psychiatric conditions that remain defined solely in terms of syndrome, e.g. migraine, torticollis, essential tremor, blepharospasm, torsion dystonia. Szasz's scepticism regarding syndromally defined diseases – only in relation to psychiatry – is entirely arbitrary. Many diseases that are outside the purview of psychiatry are defined purely in terms of the constellation of the symptoms, signs and natural history they present yet Szasz has not expressed any doubt regarding their existence. Is syndrome-based diagnosis only problematic for psychiatry but without issue for the remaining branches of medicine? If syndrome-based diagnosis is unsound on account of its absence of objectivity then it must be generally unsound and not only for psychiatry.
2. Szasz's ostensibly exclusive criterion of disease as morphological abnormality – i.e., a lesion made evident "by post-mortem examination of organs and tissues" – is unsound because it inadvertently includes many conditions that are not considered to be diseases by virtue of the fact that they don't produce suffering or disability, e.g., functionally inconsequential chromosomal translocations and deletions, fused second and third toes, dextrocardia. Szasz's conception of disease does not distinguish between necessary versus sufficient conditions in relation to diagnostic criteria. In branches of medicine other than psychiatry, morphological abnormality per se is not considered sufficient cause to make a diagnosis of disease; functional abnormality is the necessary condition.
3. Szasz's criticism of syndrome-based diagnoses is divorced from a consideration of the history of medicine. In medicine (in general) diseases are defined in terms of a multitude of criteria, these include: (a) morbid anatomy, e.g., mitral stenosis, cholecystitis; (b) histologically, e.g., most cancers, Alzheimer's disease; (c) infective organism, e.g. Tuberculosis, Measles; (d) physiologically, e.g. myasthenia gravis; (e) biochemically, e.g. aminoaciduria; (e) chromosomally, e.g. trisomy 21, Turner's syndrome; (f) molecularly, e.g. thalassemia; (g) genetically, e.g. Huntington's disease, cystic fibrosis; and (h) syndrome, e.g. migraine, torticollis, essential tremor, blepharospasm, torsion dystonia and most (so-called) mental disorders. The more objective definitions of disease – specified as (a) through (g) – became possible through the accumulation of scientific knowledge and the development of relevant technology. Initially the underlying pathology of some diseases was unknown and they were diagnosed only in terms of syndrome – no lesion could be demonstrated "by post-mortem examination of organs and tissues" (as Szasz requires) until later in history, e.g. malaria was diagnosed solely on the basis of syndrome until the advent of microbiology. A strict application of Szasz's criterion necessitates the conclusion that diseases such as malaria were "mythical" until medical microbiology arrived, at which point they became "real". In this regard Szasz's criterion of disease is unsound by virtue of its contradictory results.
4. Szasz's contention that mental illness is not associated with any morphological abnormality is uninformed by genetics, biochemistry, and current research results on the etiology of mental illness. Genes are essentially instructions for the synthesis of proteins. Hence, any condition that is even partly hereditary necessarily manifests structural abnormality at the molecular level. Regardless of whether the actual morphological abnormality can be identified, if a condition has a hereditary component then it has a biological basis. Twin and adoption studies have strongly demonstrated that heredity is a major factor in the etiology of schizophrenia; thus there must be some biological difference between schizophrenics and non-schizophrenics. In relation to major depressive disorder a difference of response between euthymic and depressed individuals to antidepressant drugs and to tryptophan depletion has been demonstrated. These results in addition to twin and adoption studies provide evidence of an underlying molecular – hence structural – abnormality to depression.
5. Szasz contends that, "Strictly speaking, disease or illness can affect only the body; hence, there can be no mental illness" and this idea is foundational to Szasz's position. In actuality, there are no physical or mental illnesses per se; there are only diseases of organisms, of persons. The bifurcation of organisms into minds and bodies is the product of the Cartesian dualism that became dominant in the late 18th century and it was at this time that the notion of insanity as something qualitatively different from other illnesses became entrenched. In actuality, brain and body comprise one integrated and indivisible system and no illness "respects" the abstraction of mind vs. body upon which Szasz's argument rests. There are no illnesses that are purely mental or purely physical. Somatic pain is itself a mental phenomenon as is the subjective distress produced by the acute phase response at the onset of illness or immediately after trauma. Similarly, conditions such as schizophrenia and major depressive disorder produce somatic symptoms. Any illness lies somewhere within a continuum between the poles of mind and body; the extrema are purely theoretical abstractions and are unoccupied by any real affliction. The mind/body division persists purely for pragmatic reasons and forms no real part of modern biomedical science.

Shorter's views

Edward Shorter^[42] replied to Szasz's essay "The myth of mental illness: 50 years later",^[43] which was published in the journal The Psychiatrist (and delivered as a plenary address at the International Congress of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Edinburgh on 24 June 2010) – in recognition of the 50th anniversary of The Myth of Mental Illness – with the following principal criticisms:

1. Szasz's critique is implicitly premised on a conception of mind drawn from the psychiatry of the early-mid 20th century – namely psychoanalytic psychiatry – and Szasz has not updated his critique in light of later developments in psychiatry. The referent of Szasz's critique – Freud's mind – is to be found only in the historical record and some isolated islands of psychoanalytic practice. To this extent, Szasz's critique does not address contemporary biologically-oriented psychiatry and is irrelevant. Certainly the phrase mental illness occurs in the contemporary psychiatric lexicon, but that is merely a legacy of the earlier psychoanalytic influence upon psychiatry; the term does not reflect a real belief that psychiatric disease – Shorter's preferred term – originates in the mind, an abstraction as Szasz rightly explains.
2. Szasz concedes that some so-called mental illnesses may have a neurological basis – but adds that were such a biological basis discovered for these so-called mental illnesses, they would have to be reclassified from mental illnesses to brain diseases, which would vindicate his position. Shorter explains that the problem with Szasz's argument here is that it is the contention of biological psychiatry that so-called mental illnesses are actually brain diseases. Modern psychiatry has de facto dispensed with the idea of mental illness, i.e. the notion that psychiatric disease is mainly or entirely psychogenic is not a part of biological psychiatry.
3. There exists at least prima facie evidence that psychiatric illness has a biological basis and Szasz either ignores this evidence or attempts to insulate his argument from such evidence by effectively claiming that "no true mental illness has a biological basis." Shorter cites hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (HPA) dysregulation, a positive dexamethasone suppression test result, and shortened rapid eye movement sleep latency in those with melancholic depression as examples of this evidence. Further examples cited by Shorter include the responsiveness of catatonia to barbiturates and benzodiazepines.

Awards

Szasz was honored with over fifty awards including:^[2]

• American Humanist Association named him Humanist of the Year (1973)^[44]
• Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards (1974)^[1]
• Martin Buber Award (1974)^[2]
• He was honored with an honorary doctorate in behavioral science at Universidad Francisco Marroquín (1979)^[45]
• Humanist Laureate Award (1995)^[2]
• Great Lake Association of Clinical Medicine Patients' Rights Advocate Award (1995)^[2]
• American Psychological Association Rollo May Award (1998)^[2]

Thomas S. Szasz Award

The Center for Independent Thought established the Thomas S. Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties.

Notable recipients

• Giorgio Antonucci
• Vladimir Bukovsky
• Henry Zvi Lothane
• Jeffrey Schaler
• Edward Snowden
• Jacob Sullum
• Phil Zimmermann
• Richard E. Vatz

See also

• Wrongful involuntary commitment
• Scientology front groups
• List of Scientology organizations

Writings

Books

• Pain and Pleasure: A Study of Bodily Feelings. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 1988 [1957]. ISBN 978-0-8156-0230-9.
• The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct. Harper & Row. 1974 [1961]. ISBN 978-0-06-014196-7.
• Law, Liberty, and Psychiatry: An Inquiry into the Social Uses of Mental Health Practices. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 1989 [1963]. ISBN 978-0-8156-0242-2.
• Psychiatric Justice. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 1988 [1965]. ISBN 978-0-8156-0231-6.
• The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: The Theory and Method of Autonomous Psychotherapy. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 1988 [1965]. ISBN 978-0-8156-0229-3.
• Ideology and Insanity: Essays on the Psychiatric Dehumanization of Man. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 1991 [1970]. ISBN 978-0-8156-0256-9.
• The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 1997 [1970]. ISBN 978-0-8156-0461-7.
• The Second Sin. Doubleday. 1974 [1973]. ISBN 978-0-7100-7757-8.
• The Age of Madness: A History of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization Presented in Selected Texts (editor). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. 1975 [1973]. ISBN 978-0-7100-7993-0.
• Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 2003 [1974]. ISBN 978-0-8156-0768-7.
• Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 1988 [1976]. ISBN 978-0-8156-0224-8.
• Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus and His Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 1990 [1976]. ISBN 978-0-8156-0247-7. (First published in 1976 under the name: Karl Kraus and the Soul-Doctors: A Pioneer Critic and His Criticism of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis – Louisiana State University Press, 1976.)
• Heresies. Doubleday Anchor. 1976. ISBN 978-0-385-11162-1.
• The Theology of Medicine: The Political-Philosophical Foundations of Medical Ethics. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 1988 [1977]. ISBN 978-0-8156-0225-5.
• Psychiatric Slavery. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 1977. ISBN 978-0-8156-0511-9.
• The Myth of Psychotherapy: Mental Healing as Religion, Rhetoric, and Repression. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 1988 [1978]. ISBN 978-0-8156-0223-1.
• Sex by Prescription: The Startling Truth about Today's Sex Therapy. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 1990 [1980]. ISBN 978-0-8156-0250-7.
• The Therapeutic State: Psychiatry in the Mirror of Current Events. Buffalo NY: Prometheus Books. 1984. ISBN 978-0879752392.
• Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 1997 [1987]. ISBN 978-0-8156-0460-0.
• The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary. Lasalle, IL: Open Court. 1990. ISBN 978-0812691030.
• Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 1996 [1992]. ISBN 978-0-8156-0333-7.
• A Lexicon of Lunacy: Metaphoric Malady, Moral Responsibility, and Psychiatry. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. 2003 [1993]. ISBN 978-1-56000-065-5.
• Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 1998 [1994]. ISBN 978-0-8156-0510-2.
• The Meaning of Mind: Language, Morality, and Neuroscience. Westport CT: Praeger Publishers. 1996. ISBN 978-0-275-95603-5.
• Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide. Westport CT: Praeger Publishers. 1999. ISBN 978-0-275-96646-1.
• Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America. Westport CT: Praeger Publishers. 2001. ISBN 978-0-275-97196-0.
• Liberation by Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. 2002. ISBN 978-0-7658-0145-6.
• Faith in Freedom: Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. 2004. ISBN 978-0-7658-0244-6.
• Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. 2004. ISBN 978-0-7658-0217-0.
• My Madness Saved Me: The Madness and Marriage of Virginia Woolf. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. 2006. ISBN 978-0-7658-0321-4.
• Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. 2007. ISBN 978-0-7658-0379-5.
• The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 2007. ISBN 978-0-8156-0867-7.
• Psychiatry: The Science of Lies. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 2008. ISBN 978-0-8156-0910-0.
• Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 2009. ISBN 978-0-8156-0943-8.
• Suicide Prohibition: The Shame of Medicine. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 2011. ISBN 978-0-8156-0990-2.
• Nurbakhsh, Javad; Szasz, Thomas; Jahangiri, Hamideh (2019). Handbook of Psychiatry volume 1. Germany: Lap Lambert. ISBN 978-3-330-34637-6.

Selected scholarly papers

• Szasz, T. (3 September 1988). "Koryagin and psychiatric coercion". The Lancet. 332 (8610): 573. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(88)92700-6. PMID 2900959. S2CID 5176787.
• Szasz, T S (16 December 1971). "More cruel than the gas chamber". New Society: 1213–1215.
• Szasz, T. (28 December 1991). "Diagnoses are not diseases". The Lancet. 338 (8782–8783): 1574–1576. doi:10.1016/0140-6736(91)92387-H. PMID 1683983. S2CID 35351783.
• Szasz, Thomas (June 1993). "Curing, coercing, and claims-making: a reply to critics". The British Journal of Psychiatry. 162 (6): 797–800. doi:10.1192/bjp.162.6.797. PMID 8330111. S2CID 2282452.
• Szasz, Thomas (June 2008). "Debunking antipsychiatry: Laing, law, and Largactil". Current Psychology. 27 (2): 79–101. doi:10.1007/s12144-008-9024-z. S2CID 145618728.
• Szasz, Thomas S. (August 1975). "Medical metaphorology". American Psychologist. 30 (8): 859–8561. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.30.8.859.
• Szasz, T. S. (October 1975). "The danger of coercive psychiatry". American Bar Association Journal. 61: 1246–1248. PMID 11664493.
• Szasz, Thomas S. (May–June 1981). "Power and psychiatry". Society. 18 (4): 16–18. doi:10.1007/BF02701339. S2CID 143684254.
• Szasz, Thomas (March–April 2004). "Protecting patients against psychiatric intervention". Society. 41 (3): 7–9. doi:10.1007/BF02690175. S2CID 144199897.
• Szasz, Thomas (July–August 2004). "Pharmacracy in America". Society. 41 (5): 54–58. doi:10.1007/BF02688218. S2CID 145162903.
• Szasz, Thomas (1976). "The Myth of Mental Illness". In Humber, James; Almeder, Robert (eds.). Biomedical Ethics and the Law. Vol. Part II. Springer US. pp. 113–122. doi:10.1007/978-1-4684-2223-8_10. ISBN 978-1-4684-2225-2.
• Szasz, Thomas (1978). "The Concept of Mental Illness: Explanation or Justification?". In Engelhardt, Tristam; Spicker, Stuart (eds.). Mental Health: Philosophical Perspectives. Philosophy and Medicine. Vol. 4. Springer Netherlands. pp. 235–250. doi:10.1007/978-94-015-6909-5_17. ISBN 978-94-015-6911-8.
• Szasz, Thomas (May–June 1994). "Mental illness is still a myth". Society. 31 (4): 34–39. doi:10.1007/BF02693245. S2CID 145520286.
• Szasz, Thomas (September 2012). "Varieties of psychiatric criticism" (PDF). History of Psychiatry. 23 (3): 349–355. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.674.8694. doi:10.1177/0957154X12450236. S2CID 143972152.
• Szasz, Thomas (Spring 1998). "The healing word: its past, present, and future". Journal of Humanistic Psychology. 38 (2): 8–20. doi:10.1177/00221678980382002. S2CID 144504646.
• Szasz T (September 1994). "Psychiatric diagnosis, psychiatric power and psychiatric abuse". Journal of Medical Ethics. 20 (3): 135–138. doi:10.1136/jme.20.3.135. PMC 1376496. PMID 7996558.
• Szasz, T. (February 2003). "The cure of souls in the therapeutic state". The Psychoanalytic Review. 90 (1): 45–62. doi:10.1521/prev.90.1.45.22089. PMID 12898787.
• Szasz, Thomas (27 April 2011). "The myth of mental illness: 50 years later". The Psychiatrist. 35 (5): 179–182. doi:10.1192/pb.bp.110.031310.
• Szasz T (August 2003). "Psychiatry and the control of dangerousness: on the apotropaic function of the term "mental illness"". Journal of Medical Ethics. 29 (4): 227–230. doi:10.1136/jme.29.4.227. PMC 1733760. PMID 12930856.
• Szasz TS (4 March 1978). . The Spectator. 240 (7809): 12–13. PMID 11665013. Archived from the original on February 23, 2014.
• "The politics of mental illness". The Spectator: 9. 31 March 1978.
• Szasz T (25 April 2006). "Secular humanism and "scientific psychiatry"". Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine. 1 (1): E5. doi:10.1186/1747-5341-1-5. PMC 1483825. PMID 16759353.
• "Law and psychiatry: The problems that will not go away". Journal of Mind and Behavior. 11 (3–4): 557–563. 1990.
• "Soviet psychiatry: the historical background". Inquiry: 4–5. 5 December 1977.
• "Soviet psychiatry: its supporters in the West". Inquiry: 4–5. 2 January 1978.
• "Soviet psychiatry: winking at psychiatric terror". Inquiry: 3–4. 6 February 1987.
• "The therapeutic state: the tyranny of pharmacracy" (PDF). The Independent Review. V (4): 485–521. Spring 2001. ISSN 1086-1653. Retrieved 20 January 2012.
• "Toward the therapeutic state". The New Republic. 11 December 1965. pp. 26–29.
• Szasz, T. (March 1993). "Crazy talk: Thought disorder or psychiatric arrogance?". British Journal of Medical Psychology. 66 (4): 61–67. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8341.1993.tb01726.x. PMID 8485078.
• "Psychiatry, anti-psychiatry, critical psychiatry: what do these terms mean?". Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology. 17 (3): 229–232. September 2010.

References

1. . Jefferson Awards for Public Service. Archived from the original on 24 November 2010. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
2. Buchanan-Barker, P; Barker, P (February 2009). "The convenient myth of Thomas Szasz". Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing. 16 (1): 87–95. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2850.2008.01310.x. PMID 19192090.
3. Carey, Benedict (12 September 2012). "Dr Thomas Szasz, Psychiatrist who led movement against his field, dies at 92". The New York Times. from the original on 27 February 2017. Retrieved 28 February 2017.
4. Knoll, James (13 September 2012). "In Memoriam – Thomas Stephen Szasz, MD". Psychiatric Times. from the original on 15 June 2015. Retrieved 26 July 2014.
5. Rosen, Jonathan (2023-07-19). "Quadruplets With Schizophrenia? Researchers Were Confounded". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-09-19.
6. Szasz, Thomas (2008). Psychiatry: the science of lies. Syracuse University Press. pp. 2–5. ISBN 978-0815609100. from the original on 2016-05-16. Retrieved 2015-06-20.
7. . FTR books. October 19, 1951. Archived from the original on August 15, 2002. Retrieved September 26, 2011.
8. "Introduction". Szasz. from the original on September 27, 2011. Retrieved September 26, 2011.
9. Oliver, Jeffrey (Summer 2006). "The Myth of Thomas Szasz". The New Atlantis. 13 (13): 68–84. PMID 17152134. from the original on 2009-12-06. Retrieved 2009-12-03.
10. "Thomas Stephen Szasz April 15, 1920 to September 8, 2012". szasz.com. from the original on 14 December 2019. Retrieved 2 December 2019.
11. Szasz, Thomas (1988-12-01). The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: The Theory and Method of Autonomous Psychotherapy. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-0229-3.
12. Spillane, Robert (2021-01-01). "Thomas Szasz: From social behaviourist to dramaturgic-existentialist". Existential Analysis. 32 (1): 139–153.
13. Szasz, Thomas (February 1958). "Psychiatry, Ethics, and the Criminal Law". Columbia Law Review. 58 (2): 183–198. doi:10.2307/1119827. JSTOR 1119827. from the original on 2019-03-27. Retrieved 2020-07-14.
14. Phillips, James; et al. (January 13, 2012). "The Six Most Essential Questions in Psychiatric Diagnosis: A Pluralogue. Part 1: Conceptual and Definitional Issues in Psychiatric Diagnosis". Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine. 7 (3): 3. doi:10.1186/1747-5341-7-3. PMC 3305603. PMID 22243994.
15. T. Szasz, Ceremonial Chemistry, 1974
16. Szasz, Thomas Stephen (1973). The second sin. Anchor Press. ISBN 978-0385045131.
17. Psychiatry REVEALED!! on YouTube
18. Szasz, Thomas S. (1974). "7 Language and Protolanguage". The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (revised ed.). New York: Harper & Row Publishers. pp. 117–119. ISBN 978-0060911515. The significance of the affective use of body language – or generally, of the language of illness – can hardly be exaggerated.... It is part of our social ethic that we ought to feel sorry for sick people and should try to be helpful to them. Communications by means of body signs may therefore be intended mainly to induce the following sorts of feelings in the recipient: "Aren't you sorry for me now? You should be ashamed of yourself for having hurt me so! You should be sad seeing how I suffer...." and so forth.... [T]he flamboyant "schizophrenic body feelings" encountered today, represent communications in the contexts of specific social situations. Their aim is to induce mood rather than to convey information. They thus make the recipient of the message feel as if he had been told: "Pay attention to me! Pity me! Scold me!" and so forth.... [C]hildren and women often can get their way with tears where their words would fall on deaf ears – and so can patients with symptoms. The point is that when some persons in some situations cannot make themselves heard by means of ordinary language – for example, speech or writing – they may try to make themselves heard by means of protolanguage, for example, weeping or "symptoms".... We have come thus to speak of all these silent and not-so-silent cries and commands, pleas and reproaches – that is, of all these endlessly diverse "utterances" – as so many different mental illnesses!
19. Lelli, Valeria (2011). "The body language: a semiotic reading of Szasz' Anti-psychiatry" (PDF). Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences. 4 (2): 34–36. (PDF) from the original on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2017-03-02.
20. "My Madness Saved Me: The Madness and Marriage of Virginia Woolf". from the original on 2006-09-04. Retrieved 2006-10-11.
21. "The Nazis sought to prevent Jewish suicides. Wherever Jews tried to kill themselves – in their homes, in hospitals, on the deportation trains, in the concentration camps – the Nazi authorities would invariably intervene in order to save the Jews' lives, wait for them to recover, and then send them to their prescribed deaths." [1] 2016-04-08 at the Wayback Machine quotation from Kwiet, K.: "Suicide in the Jewish Community", in Leo Baeck Yearbook, vol. 38. 1993.
22. "Thomas Szasz - the myth of mental illness".
23. Klein, Daniel B. (1993). (PDF). Southern Economic Journal. 59 (3): 552–553. doi:10.2307/1060304. JSTOR 1060304. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 25, 2016.
24. Ceremonial Chemistry (1974), p. 15
25. Baker, Robert (Winter 2003). "Psychiatry's Gentleman Abolitionist" (PDF). The Independent Review. VII (3): 455–460. ISSN 1086-1653. (PDF) from the original on April 10, 2019. Retrieved February 12, 2012.
26. Jacob Sullum (July 2000). "Curing the Therapeutic State: Thomas Szasz interviewed by Jacob Sullum". Reason Magazine: 28 et seq. from the original on 2014-01-14. Retrieved 2015-07-15.
27. Costigan, Lucy (2004). Social Awareness in Counseling. iUniverse. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-595-75523-3. from the original on 2014-01-01. Retrieved 2015-06-20.
28. Fitzpatrick, Mike (August 2004). "From 'nanny state' to 'therapeutic state'". The British Journal of General Practice. 1 (54(505)): 645. PMC 1324868. PMID 15517694.
29. Szasz, Thomas (Spring 2001). "The Therapeutic State: The Tyranny of Pharmacracy" (PDF). The Independent Review. V (4): 485–521. ISSN 1086-1653. (PDF) from the original on February 14, 2012. Retrieved January 20, 2012.
30. . Archived from the original on January 15, 2006.
31. Szasz, Thomas (2011). "The myth of mental illness: 50 years later" (PDF). The Psychiatrist. 35 (5): 179–182. doi:10.1192/pb.bp.110.031310. (PDF) from the original on June 20, 2012. Retrieved April 27, 2012.
32. Fuller Torrey, Edwin (1988). Surviving schizophrenia: a family manual. Perennial Library. p. 315. ISBN 978-0-06-055119-3. from the original on 2016-08-04. Retrieved 2015-06-20.
33. Szasz, Thomas (June 1, 1971). "American Association for the Abolition of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization". American Journal of Psychiatry. 127 (12): 1698. doi:10.1176/ajp.127.12.1698. PMID 5565860. from the original on February 3, 2014. Retrieved June 1, 2014.
34. Szasz, Thomas (1971). "To the editor". American Journal of Public Health. 61 (6): 1076. doi:10.2105/AJPH.61.6.1076-a. PMC 1529883. PMID 18008426. from the original on 2015-03-18. Retrieved 2015-06-20.
35. Schaler, Jeffrey, ed. (2004). Szasz Under Fire: A Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics. Open Court Publishing. p. xiv. ISBN 978-0-8126-9568-7. from the original on 2020-01-28. Retrieved 2015-06-20.
36. . Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR). Archived from the original on November 28, 2005. Retrieved July 29, 2006.
37. . Archived from the original on 2003-07-14.
38. "Thomas Szasz speaks (Part 2 of 2)". All in the Mind. 11 April 2009. from the original on 22 December 2012. Retrieved 2 January 2013.
39. Parker, Ian (2001). "Russell Tribunal on Human rights in Psychiatry & "Geist Gegen Genes", June 30 – July 2, 2001, Berlin". Psychology in Society. 27: 120–122. ISSN 1015-6046.
40. Kirk, S. A., Gomory, T., & Cohen, D. (2013). Mad Science: Psychiatric Coercion, Diagnosis, and Drugs. Transaction Publishers. pp. 134–135.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
41. R. E. Kendell (2005). "The Myth of Mental Illness". In Schaler, Jeffrey (ed.). Szasz Under Fire: The Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics (1st ed.). Illinois: Open Court. pp. 29–48. ISBN 978-0812695687.
42. Shorter, Edward (May 2011). "Still tilting at windmills: Commentary on ... The myth of mental illness". The Psychiatrist. 35 (5): 183–184. doi:10.1192/pb.bp.111.034108.
43. Szasz, Thomas (May 2011). "The myth of mental illness: 50 years later". The Psychiatrist. 35 (5): 179–182. doi:10.1192/pb.bp.110.031310.
44. . American Humanist Association. Archived from the original on January 14, 2013. Retrieved May 1, 2012.
45. "Honorary doctoral degrees". Universidad Francisco Marroquín. from the original on January 12, 2013. Retrieved May 1, 2012.

Further reading

• Bentall, Richard; Pilgrim, David (March 1993). "Thomas Szasz, crazy talk and the myth of mental illness". British Journal of Medical Psychology. 66 (1): 69–76. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8341.1993.tb01727.x. PMID 8485079.
• Bracken, Pat; Thomas, Philip (September 2010). "From Szasz to Foucault: On the Role of Critical Psychiatry" (PDF). Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology. 17 (3): 219–228.
• Buchanan-Barker, P.; Barker, P. (February 2009). "The convenient myth of Thomas Szasz". Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing. 16 (1): 87–95. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2850.2008.01310.x. PMID 19192090.
• Evans, Rod (2008). "Szasz, Thomas (1920–)". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). Szasz, Thomas. The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 497–498. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n304. ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024.
• Fontaine, Michael (2014). "On Religious and Psychiatric Atheism: The Success of Epicurus, the Failure of Thomas Szasz".
• Pols, Jan (2005). The Politics of Mental Illness: Myth and Power in the Work of Thomas S. Szasz (PDF). ISBN 978-90-805136-4-8. The book in full is available online by click
• Powell, Jim (2000). The triumph of liberty: a 2,000-year history, told through the lives of freedom's greatest champions. Free Press. ISBN 978-0-684-85967-5.
• Schaler, Jeffrey, ed. (2004). Szasz Under Fire: A Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics. Open Court Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-8126-9568-7.
• Schaler, Jeffrey A.; Lothane, Henry Zvi; Vatz, Richard E., eds. (2017). Thomas S. Szasz: The Man and His Ideas. Routledge. ISBN 978-1412865142.
• Vatz, Richard; Weinberg, Lee, eds. (1983). Thomas Szasz, primary values and major contentions. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-0-87975-187-6.
• Vatz, Richard (Fall 2006). "Rhetoric and psychiatry: A Szaszian perspective on a political case study". Current Psychology. 25 (1): 173–181. doi:10.1007/s12144-006-1001-9. S2CID 143487239.
• Vatz, Richard (Summer 1973). "The myth of the rhetorical situation". Philosophy & Rhetoric. 6 (3): 154–161. JSTOR 40236848.
• Watts, Geoff (20 October 2012). "Thomas Stephen Szasz". The Lancet. 380 (9851): 1380. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61790-5. S2CID 54276109.
• Williams, Arthur; Caplanemail, Arthur (20 October 2012). "Thomas Szasz: rebel with a questionable cause". The Lancet. 380 (9851): 1378–1379. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61789-9. PMID 23091833. S2CID 5065659.

External links

• Bibliography of Szasz's writings.
• Thomas Szasz Papers at Syracuse University
• The Thomas S. Szasz Cybercenter for Liberty and Responsibility
• Concepts and Controversies in Modern Medicine: Psychiatry and Law: How are They Related? pt. 1 Video discussion of forensic psychiatry by Szasz and Bernard Diamond.
• Concepts and Controversies in Modern Medicine: Psychiatry and Law: How are They Related? pt. 2