Thomas Szasz Quotes on Psychiatry as a Pseudo-Science
- “The discovery that all mental diseases are brain diseases would mean the disappearance of psychiatry into neurology.”
- “No behavior or misbehavior is a disease or can be a disease. There is no mental disease. Period.”
- “I don’t deny the existence of brain diseases; on the contrary, my point is that if mental illnesses are brain diseases, we ought to call them brain diseases and treat them as brain diseases—and not call them mental illnesses and treat them as such. In the 19th century, madhouses were full of people who were ‘crazy’; more than half of them, as it turned out, had brain diseases—mainly neurosyphilis, or brain injuries, intoxications, or infections. Once that was understood, neurosyphilis ceased to be a mental illness and became a brain disease. The same thing happened with epilepsy.”
- “There is no blood or other biological test to ascertain the presence or absence of a mental illness, as there is for most bodily diseases. If such a test were developed (for what, theretofore, had been considered a psychiatric illness), then the condition would cease to be a mental illness and would be classified, instead, as a symptom of a bodily disease.”
- “If we are to consider mental disease to be like physical disease, we ought to have biochemical or pathological evidence.” And if an “illness” is to be “scientifically meaningful, it must somehow be capable of being approached, measured or tested in a scientific fashion, as through a blood test or an electroencephalograph. If it cannot be so measured—as is the case [with]…’mental illness’—then the phrase ‘illness’ is at best a metaphor and at worst a myth, and that therefore ‘treating’ these ‘illnesses’ is an equally amorphous and unscientific enterprise.”
- “On television, everything can now be a psychiatric ‘illness’ as long as there are psychiatrists willing to ‘diagnose’ and ‘treat’ it…[they] invariably label the behaviors as ‘illnesses’ which are therefore uncontrollable and comparable to alcoholism or drug addiction. Child molesters and murderers are thus depicted as poor ‘patients’ who are not responsible for their ‘sick’ behavior.”
- “Objective, medical diagnostic tests measure chemical and physical changes in tissues; they do not evaluate or judge ideas or behaviors. Before there were sophisticated diagnostic tests, physicians had a hard time distinguishing between real epilepsy—that is to say, neurological seizures—and what we call ‘hysterical seizures,’ which is simply faking epilepsy, pretending to have a seizure. When epilepsy became understood as due to an increased excitability of some area of the brain, then it ceased to be Psychopathology or mental illness, and became neuropathology or brain disease. It then becomes a part of neurology. Epilepsy still exists. Neurosyphilis, though very rare, still exists, and is not treated by psychiatrists; it is treated by specialists in infectious diseases, because it’s an infection of the brain.”
- “I am bitterly opposed to all of these autocratic medicalizations. All of these glorify the punitive state and the punitive doctor and debase the citizen for exercising his free choice. It’s as simple as that.”
Back: Szasz on the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
Next: Szasz on Child Psychiatry
Back to Main: CCHR Co-founder Dr. Thomas Szasz Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus
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Ok, u tell me this: what is demon-possession? Mental illness or pretending..even if they KILL somebody??? What would YOU do to people who have all the symptoms of demon-possession????
Open up your Bible to the book of Mark and you will find a man
called Legion who was afflicted with 2,ooo demons that Jesus later
drove out of him. Jesus sat next to Legion and he was in his right
mind.
If you won’t believe in the One True GOD of the Bible, it doesn’t
matter. GOD has existed,exists,and will continue to exist. GOD is
a Supernatural Supreme being who is eternal and infinite and perfect
in every way.
If you won’t believe in satan and his fallen angels, it doesn’t
matter. Satan and his demons exist, and have existed since GOD
created Lucifer and then he became satan by believing he could
exalt himself higher than GOD.
If you can’t define demon possession with all the killing and evil
going on in our world,then I guess you are very deceived.
“Pychiatrist’s” are satan’s puppets, they are evil (they cause
their “patients” harm/death prescribing poison to naive humanbeings
and infants can you believe?) They know what they are doing is wrong
and they continue to push drugs for the pharmaceutical companies.
Receiving kickbacks: vacations, luxury cars, expensive dinners,
homes, etc. at the expense of destroying their trusting naive
“patients.” The “Wolves in sheeps clothing” if you will.
Hope this helps.
An infant can’t digest food adults eat, so they are given baby food.
But stupid parents will believe the “psychiatrist” and administer
highly potent and dangerous drugs to their toddler??? Why?
Because their baby cries and 5 minutes is too long??? If a parent
takes a child to a “psychiatrist” in the first place, the DCF should
take that child from those “parents.” They are not fit to be parents.
“PSYCHIATRY” IS THE DISEASE THAT IT PURPORTS TO TREAT!! It is an evil
deception right from satan himself. A “psychiatrist” as a medical
doctor is as credible as the tooth fairy being able to clean your
teeth. Stating that “mental illness” is a real legitimate medical
disease, is tantamount to saying santa and his reindeer are not
fiction, that they exist because the sales of milk and cookies soars
in December of each year.
People are demon possessed and that is a fact. I suspect we are all
being tempted by satan and his demons. Satan tempted Adam and Eve,
and he hates us too. It is not so much what we have to do, it is what
any person who is filled with evil has to do. Resist and the devil
will flee (Book of John) Calling out to GOD through Jesus is the ONLY
way to rid oneself of satan.
You can say yeah right! But it is all 100% fact. Gravity doesn’t
respect anyone, it doesnt care if you believe that it doesn’t exist.
Jump from 500 ft to pavement and you will hit it hard and die.
Math and science don’t respect anyone, apply the principles correctly
and they will work for you, abuse them or disregard them and they
won’t work for you.
GOD respects no one, surrender to Him, keep His commandments and He
will protect you, don’t and He will turn His face.