Thomas Szasz

Introduction

Thomas S. Szasz was born the April 15th 1920 with Budapest, capital of the Hungary.

He is Psychiatre and professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of New York with Syracuse. It is a contestaire and critical morals and scientific foundations of the Psychiatrie.

Its famous books are representative of its line of thought and its political struggle.

The Myth off Mental Illness

The Manufactures Madness off: With Comparative Study off the Enquiry and the Mental Health Movement .

Its fight Libertaire refers to medicine in particular and, in general, with privauté of the contractual relations of any kind between major individuals. The most known example and most common refers to the sexual orientations which passed from pathological to the normals. In the time of Freud was " abuse sexuel" all that did not take part in the biological reproduction of the Man in Vienna.

Biography

Thomas Stephen Szasz is Psychiatre and professor " emeritus" at the University from New York to Syracuse, the " Health Center" Science;. He is also researcher associated with the Cato Institute , Washington, D.C, author and lecturer (“lecturer”). Its book “Princeps”, “Founder” and “Traditional”, “The Myth off Mental Illness” (1961) made of him a famous and discussed figure. Many of its work like “Law, Liberty, and Psychiatry”, “The Ethics off Psychoanalysis”, “Chemistry Ceremonial” and “Our Right to Drugs are seen like most important and most dominating the 20th century by the leaders (“leaders”) Right, Medicine and Social sciences.

Native of Budapest in 1920, it has immigrant in the United States in 1938 to flee the Nazis, and it was allowed a few months after at the University of Cincinnati, OH. After having obtained its diploma of Physics in 1941 with the honors, it enters to the College of Medicine of Cincinnati to leave with a doctorate in Medicine, M.D. in 1944. Later, it received a psychoanalytical formation of “Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis" and, for the five following years, became member of the teaching staff, fascinating leave of the atif service of US Navy. Member of the " American Psychiatric Association" and permanent member of L `" American Psychoanalytic Association" , Dr. Szasz published much in important reviews psychiatric and psychoanalytical and its conferences are available on video cassettes and DVD. As a neighbor, it was invited by the School of the Social service of the University of Montreal in 1992 to make a conference with the welfare workers in the relation of assistance to the homeless" , " itinérants" (SDF, " Without Fixe" Residence;).

Faithful to its thought, he declared and showed the need for asking initially assisted social that which they need, before proceeding to the interventions.

The man and his work

Ideologist of some " Antipsychiatry " , Thomas Szasz was recognized like " the man who has constrained psychiatry to admit the existence and the importance of the moral conflicts and éthiques".

Szasz denounces the use of psychiatry like means of social control, comparing the role of the psychiatrist towards deviating with that of the inquisiteurs vis-a-vis the heretics. Any deviance is, socially and politically, madness and félonie. According to him, the mental disease is not a medical problem, but a problem of being able.

“Let us stop telling that there is, behind each twisted thought, a molecule twisted in our cerveau".

If such were the case, Szasz specifies, it would be necessary to treat schizophrenia like any other disease, and not to make mentally ills more a category with share which one locks up and which one looks after of authority. " But, it specifies, I do not idealize the madness, I do not think that the insane ones are higher beings, victims of the company capitaliste".

“We are in the presence of a religious phenomenon and not scientifique".

The diagnosis of " folie" took the succession, in our Western civilization, of that of " possession".

The evolution of the diagnoses according to manners brings an additional proof, according to Szasz, of the not very scientific character of the mental disease. At the end of the 19th century the psychiatrists treated especially hystericals and epileptics. The hysterical, like the witch of the Middle Ages, was generally an young woman. Today, these two " diseases " practically disappeared - without treatment. They were replaced by the Schizophrénie and the Paranoïa. The children " hyperactifs" treaties with the " Ritalin" are the current psychiatric fashion. What disturbs us evolved/moved.

The concept of " disease mentale" we allows to adapt to us to behaviors of which we have evil to accept that they can be normal. For example, the " crime". " The criminals are not carried out any more, they are soignés". " The role of the psychiatrists in the company moderne" is to release the innocent culprits and to intern the ". One condemned to died in Florida, cannot be carried out because the psychiatrists of the prison find it too insane to undergo its sorrow, according to the legal provisions on the culpability and the criminal responsibility. Should it thus be looked after to be able it to carry out, Szasz request? The supreme court of the United States questions itself. Until the 18th century, the evil was interpreted like a possession by the Diable. Today the evil is necessarily the sign of a genetic and chemical disorder. All that, according to Szasz, concerns the mythical thought, and not science.

The psychoanalysis, like psychiatry, is only used to deny the free will and to make move back the individual responsibility. The robbers, explains Szasz, were formerly regarded as persons in charge of their acts and were punished like such. But as of the moment when the robber becomes a " kleptomane" , the flamer, a " pyromane" , etc, it is not responsible any more for the vol. It is " agi" outside by impulses which escape to him and which he is unaware of. The psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan already distinguished “Reality” from” Imaginary” and the “Symbolic system”.

In the Relativity of normal and pathological, there are levels of reality whose first level is that of object the reality physical known as “objective” of the beings, facts and objects directly observable, quantifiable and measurable by all. On the second level is the psychical reality of the significances and values conferred on these beings, facts and objects of physical reality. On the third level is reality symbolic system of the beliefs of the Religion and codes of conduct of the Morale which directs and delimits the significances and possible values of the imaginary psychical reality. The political authority, being the senatorial capacity of the author of the laws, is based on reality symbolic system the Religion and Morals. A Théocratie is based on the Religion alone, while the Démocratie is based on a consensual Morals.

It is with the stones of the Religion and the bricks of the Morale which build the psychiatric hospitals and the prisons where any deviance is socially and politically madness and félonie.

The political authority of the laws and payments is implemented by the executive of the powers judicial and police of the “potentas” or consular capacity in ancient Rome and the administrative “podestas” of the prisons and psychiatric hospitals. The immediate social capacity of Marcel Mauss is the rejection, the exclusion and the contempt of the social community.

With these realities, there is also the " reality bureaucratique" where is " réel" all that is registered on official documents. In the calm and serene sky of the beginning of the Years 1970, a report/ratio of experimentation published in the worthy review " Science" burst as a bomb.

Students " normaux" and perfectly healthy went voluntary for this experimentation. They were presented to a psychiatric hospital with their " file médical" mentioning to them " maladie". During their stay, everyone really took them for " fous" with symptoms appropriate to their " disease officielle" , except the " fous" , of course.

Conclusion

Dr. Thomas S. Szasz launched a violent load against the defects of thought and action in mental health, like that of Dr. Anthony Wilden with his Théorie of the contexts in epistemology against the defects of thought and action which make doubtful the " scientificité" medical models. He was also used by the scientologists in their anti-" load; psy".

Notes and references of the article

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