The Prominent Doctor Who Called Mental Illness "A Myth," and Psychiatrists "Enemies of Humanity!"

Controversial Views and Quotes by an Unorthodox Psychiatrist

Today, a large number of experts and scientists are what I call hired (or for-hire) scientists or “businessman scientists.” Their good standing in their profession requires that they repeat orthodox views and protocols approved by the industry and their employers. I am not judging them as I used to be part of that group. But as I shared with details in my book and earlier blogs “Why Did Einstein Remove his Hat in Rainy Weather?” and “The Story of a Man whom Einstein Considered a Genius, and his Argument with a Judge,” and “Informal Tennis Shoes: How a Top Microbiologist Chose America Over Homeland France?,” many scientists born in the 19th century or early half of the 20th century were polymaths and what I call philosopher scientists, the real Ph.D.’s, i.e., Philosophy doctors who understood and debated the philosophy (wisdom) of scientific principles and mechanisms. To them, science was not a religion to obey or a lucrative opportunity for lifelong jobs and grants, but an exciting (intellectually) perilous process of constant enquiry and discovery. They were very different than many of the polished modern businessmen scientists. Philosopher polymath scientists were really passionate and even expressed exaggerated views and convictions. Nothing was sacred to them except their intellectual integrity and conscience. In this blog, I introduce another 20th century philosopher polymath (psychiatrist, psychologist, physician) worth knowing.

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Thomas Stephen Szasz, M.D. (1920-2012), was an iconoclastic psychiatrist, author of The Myth of Mental Illness (1961), and Professor in Psychiatry at the State University of New York in Syracuse, New York. He argued that what are called mental illnesses are often better described as "problems in living, whether be biologic, economic, political, or sociopsychological." (I use the word “biopsychosocial” in my book to refer to our species and discuss the roots of dissociative imbalances and iseases). So Szasz opposed involuntary institutional psychiatry and coercion, and chemical/pharmaceutical psychiatric drugs as treatments but he was not against contractual or consensual psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, or counseling, or voluntary use of (non-pharmaceutical) drugs like marijuana by people to control the way they think, feel, behave and perceive.

A libertarian, Szasz believed the medical establishment in general, and psychiatrists in particular, have become like old religions “arms of the state” to undermine people’s control over their own lives as free sovereign intelligent individuals. He was against labeling and branding humans with psychological disorders. In The Manufacture of Madness (1970), he writes: “In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients.” Elsewhere, admonishing the psychiatric and psychological establishment, he says: “He who defines, dominates… In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined”

Szasz was known for other controversial but notable quotes such as:

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.. Although (mental illness) might have been a useful concept in the nineteenth century, today it is scientifically worthless and socially harmful. In non-psychiatric circles mental illness all too often is considered to be whatever psychiatrists say it is. The answer to the question, Who is mentally ill? thus becomes: Those who are confined in mental hospitals or who consult psychiatrists in their private offices… Although both the natural and moral sciences seek to understand the objects of their observation, in natural science the purpose of this is to be able to control them better, whereas in moral science it is, or ought to be, to be better able to leave them alone. The morally proper aim of psychology, then, is self-control… What had been drapetomania became depression. ... Modern man runs away from a life that seems to him a kind of slavery .. Anxiety is the unwillingness to play even when you know the odds are for you. Courage is the willingness to play even when you know the odds are against you… Judges and prosecutors, lawyers and psychiatrists, all protest their passionate desire to know why a person accused of a crime did what he did. But their actions completely belie their words: their efforts are now directed toward letting everyone speak in court but the defendant himself -- especially if he is accused of a political or psychiatric crime… Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people. In the United States today, opiates are the religion of the people… The wise treat self-respect as non-negotiable, and will not trade it for health or wealth or anything else.. Prostitution is said to be the world’s oldest profession. It is, indeed, a model of all professional work: the worker relinquishes control over himself … in exchange for money. Because of the passivity it entails, this is a difficult and, for many, a distasteful role… The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naïve forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget… For Jews, the Messiah has never come; for Christians, He has come but once; for modern man, He appears and disappears with increasing rapidity. The saviors of modern man, the "scientists" who promise salvation through the "discoveries" of ethology and sociology, psychology and psychiatry, and all the other bogus religions, issue forth periodically, as if selected by some Messiah-of-the-Month Club… A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong… The concept of disease is fast replacing the concept of responsibility. With increasing zeal Americans use and interpret the assertion "I am sick" as equivalent to the assertion "I am not responsible": Smokers say they are not responsible for smoking, drinkers that they are not responsible for drinking, gamblers that they are not responsible for gambling.. People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds; it is something one creates… Why is self-control, autonomy, such a threat to authority? Because the person who controls himself, who is his own master, has no need for an authority to be his master. This, then, renders authority unemployed. What is he to do if he cannot control others? To be sure, he could mind his own business. But this is a fatuous answer, for those who are satisfied to mind their own business do not aspire to become authorities.

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Szasz was definitely not a reductionist scientist. I discuss the benefits and drawbacks of a reductionist approach to science in my book, independently published and on Amazon’s Hot New Release in Behavioral and Evolutionary Psychology and Modern Philosophy.