Maybe this time the thread will go a bit better?
I wanted to restart this because I liked the opinions Clayton was posting down.
Either way, to be honest, I'm not sure how much of people debating over Szasz comes down to semantical bickering. Anti-Szasz people seem to say, "Szasz doesn't believe that mental illness exists!" And then pro-Szasz people seem to say, "You don't understand what Szasz was saying."
On the one hand, I do think that psychiatry has gotten carried away plenty of times. E.g., drapetomania, hysteria, and that colorful time during the 1950's that lobotomy was considered a miracle cure. Also, I think what a lot of people should also understand is that Szasz came from a history closer to Soviet 'psychiatry', which was really just a more socially acceptable arm of the gulag.
However, this doesn't necesarrily mean throwing out the baby with the bathwater. That link someone else posted to of Professor Sapinsky (which, I've seen that talk before, and it really _is_ a good talk), makes a strong case for at least schizophrenia not being one of these 'made-up-to-get-you-to-socially-conform' 'diseases'. What with the strong genetic precursors (I think they actually identified a gene that _reallyreally_ strongly correlates with schizophrenia, in which case it would be medically measurable, i.e., do some genome sequencing), or with an actual brain scan.
Yet, at the same time, the power some psychiatrists have can have some unintended consequences. I.e., if you are depressed, having a legal obligation to see a therapist would probably be something you'd want to avoid--I'm not sure if it's true that psychiatrist's have that power in some jurisdictions, or my friend was messing with me when he said that.
Well, those are my two cents.
Latest Projects
"Even when leftists talk about discrimination and sexism, they're damn well talking about the results of the economic system" ~Neodoxy
I haven't read a whole lot of his writings, but where I think Thomas Szasz made a valuable contribution was in noting how susceptible psychology and especially psychiatry are to politicization. Just check out so-called "oppositional-defiant disorder" for an example of this.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
schizophrenia not being one of these 'made-up-to-get-you-to-socially-conform' 'diseases'.
Any malfunction of the brain of the magnitude of schizophrenia also has the side-effect of rendering the individual legally incompetent. So, the root issue is not medical, in these situations, it is legal. The law should correctly handle the disposition of medical decision-making authority by conferring it to a single individual empowered to make decisions on the behalf of the diseased individual.
People who suffer from incapacitating diseases like schizophrenia today are victims of a tragedy of the commons. Doctors can earn reputation from testifying as "expert witnesses" to courts, they can earn promotions, they suffer unjust legal liabilities. This creates all sorts of perverse incentives. Modern law has the decision-making power regarding the disposition of the medical treatment of incompetents distributed among many, disinterested individuals. The correct solution is shown by praxeological analysis: assign "property rights" (decision-making power) over the individual to a single trustee/guardian/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. Then, it is up to the judgment of the trustee to determine what sorts of treatments are or are not appropriate for the individual that he has taken charge of. Problem solved. No more silly questions about what does or doesn't constitute disease. If it's not measurable and the trustee doesn't believe that the incapacitated individual is suffering, then it's not a disease.
Clayton -