QotD: On 'addiction'

"Religious and medical propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding, I hold some simple truths to be self-evident. One of these truths is that just as the dead do not rise from the grave, so drugs do not commit crimes. The dead remain dead. Drugs are inert chemicals that have no effect on human beings who choose not to use them. No one has to smoke cigarettes, and no one has to shoot heroin. People smoke cigarettes because they want to, and they shoot heroin because they want to."
~ Thomas Szasz, from his article "The Protocols of the Learned Experts on Heroin" in The Libertarian Review

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QotD: "So long as men denounce each other as mentally sick—so that the madman can always be considered the Other, never the Self—mental illness will remain an easily exploitable concept, and Coercive Psychiatry a flourishing institution"

"So long as men denounce each other as mentally sick (homosexual, addicted, insane, and so forth)—so that the madman can always be considered the Other, never the Self—mental illness will remain an easily exploitable concept, and Coercive Psychiatry a flourishing institution...
    "The passion to interpret as madness that with which we disagree seems to have infected the best of contemporary minds."
        ~ Thomas Szasz, from his book  The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement

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The man who thought psychiatrists were nuts

Guest post by Doug French

This week is a big one in the psychiatry world. The American Psychiatric Association released the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). What is now a massive 1,000-page tome doesn't come out very often, but when it does, as Johns Hopkins distinguished professor Paul McHugh writes, the book "shape[s] what psychiatrists say and do with their patients."

Back in the old days, say, in 1952, when the DSM-1 was a spiral-bound pamphlet, people were shy; now they have “social anxiety disorder.” People who were once referred to as nervous Nellies are now afflicted with “general anxiety disorder.”  And children who were once simply inquisitive are now tortured by “attention deficit disorder.”
Everywhere you look there is a disorder, and someone who is allegedly suffering it. But after just a few precious minutes spent with a psychiatrist, the troubled are sent off to their friendly pharmacist for the modern version of "mother's little helper."

Thomas Szasz, who died at age 92 last fall, believed the psychiatric community was -- dare I say it -- nuts.

Szasz wrote in his book The Second Sin,

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.

Imagine a book full of witty common-sense quips similar to the above, listed from A-Z. That is Szasz's Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary.

In this age of Obamacare, Big Pharma, and the therapeutic state, the wisdom of Szasz, arguably the medical profession's biggest classical liberal, will reassure you that you're not the one's that's crazy.
Szasz believed that each person owns his or her body and mind, and has the right to be free from the violence of others. The government, in his view, has no business interfering with the practice of medicine, suicide, the use and sale of drugs, or of sexual relations.

He argued that the definitions contained in books like the DSM-5 were simply names attached to sets of behavioural criteria. He opposed involuntary psychiatric treatment while at the same time condemning the insanity defence.

The scare tactics used by the drug prohibitionists were vigorously disputed by Szasz. In an interview with Reason magazine in 1974, he said,

The idea that a single experience with a drug -- say, heroin -- makes one a 'slave' to it, makes one unable to exist without it, is simply not true. It's what I call 'pharmacomythology' -- in contrast to pharmacology, which has to do with the real chemical effects of drugs.

Szasz believed in a free market in all things, including heroin.*  Giving yourself pleasure shouldn't be a crime, he argued, even if it kills you. In fact, killing yourself shouldn't be illegal either.

Szasz believed the term "mental illness" is simply a metaphor. His view was that psychiatrists can't really treat anyone. Szasz believed the subject matter of psychiatry is, the same as religion, "what used to be called moral philosophy, of what the great dramatists and novelists of all ages have written about."

When pressed, he called psychiatry a religion, or several religions. Szasz, the great libertarian, was essentially the atheist of psychiatry. Psychiatry is the misuse of language, he said. Patients aren't sick, and psychiatrists aren't treating any sort of illness.

He argued for a complete separation of psychiatry and state, arguing:

If we recognise that "mental illness" is a metaphor for disapproved thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, we are compelled to recognise as well that the primary function of Psychiatry is to control thought, mood, and behaviour. Hence, like Church and State, Psychiatry and the State ought to be separated by a "wall." At the same time, the State ought not to interfere with mental health practices between consenting adults. The role of psychiatrists and mental health experts with regard to law, the school system, and other organisations ought to be similar to the role of clergymen in those situations.

Szasz told Reason that he liked to think up short statements or aphorisms. Words to the Wise compiles 240 pages of the brilliant fruit from Szasz. It is the perfect book, not necessarily to read cover to cover, but to poke through for pleasure and reference.

There are extensive entries for "language," "drugs," "psychoanalysis," "suicide," and "therapeutic state," among others.
Szasz had a way of looking at the world that will turn you around and make you think. He does this not with long-winded monologues, but with sentences and paragraphs that are both pithy and memorable.

Remembering the country's founding, Szasz explains that the United States government "was established on the principle that there are certain things it must not do to people. These injunctions are properly called the Bill of Rights." Today's government, however, believes "that there are certain things it must do for or to the people. These prescriptions ought properly to be called the Bill of Wrongs."

• "Giving oneself a controlled substance is a crime. Accepting it from a physician is a treatment"

• "Treating addiction to heroin with methadone is like treating addiction to scotch with bourbon"

• "Some parents want their children to have it better; others want them to do better. The former are likely to have incompetent and unhappy children, the latter, competent and happy ones."

"Statist medicine turns adults into children," Szasz writes.

Popular acceptance of this paternalistic substitution of needs for wants -- of medicalised permissions for personal decisions -- is emblematic of how readily the American people have embraced medical statism, and rejected individual liberty and personal responsibility.

More than once, the author will make you chuckle. For instance:

The four categories of persons who can be relied on not to keep promises: politicians, psychiatrists, psychopaths, and psychotics.

Speaking of the DSM-5, Szasz writes:

What the sharia is to the Islamic state, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association is to the therapeutic state.

Unquestionably, Szasz displays his wisdom throughout:

Most people want liberty and self-determination for themselves and subjection for others. Some want subjection for everyone. Few want liberty and self-determination for everyone.

Thomas Szasz was one of the few who wanted liberty for everyone and is considered (rightly) one of the heroes of the freedom movement. Words to the Wise is great way to build a common-sense vocabulary in freedom, psychiatry, medicine, and so much more.


Doug French is president of the Mises Institute and senior editor of the Laissez Faire Club. He received his master's degree under the direction of Murray N. Rothbard at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, after many years in the business of banking. He is the author of two books, “Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases in the Supply of Money,” the first major empirical study of the relationship between early bubbles and the money supply, and “Walk Away,” a monograph assessing the philosophy and morality of strategic default. This post posted by permission of Money Morning Australia.
RELATED:

• Thomas Szasz's Summary Statement and Manifesto
• “Curing the Therapeutic State: Thomas Szasz interviewed by Jacob Sullum” – Reason, 2000
• Thomas Szasz’s website

* THOMAS SZASZ in The Second Sin: “We speak of a person being ‘under the influence’  of alcohol, or heroin, or amphetamine, and believe that these substances affect him so profoundly as to render him utterly helpless in their grip. We thus consider it scientifically justified to take the most stringent precautions against these things and often prohibit their nonmedical, or even their medical, use. But a person may be under the influence not only of material substances but also of spiritual ideas and sentiments, such as patriotism, Catholicism, or Communism. But we are not afraid of these influences, and believe that each person is, or ought to be, capable of fending for himself."

Quote of the day: Szasz on prayer

“If you talk to God, that's called 'prayer.' If God talks to you, that's called 'schizophrenia.' "
……………………………………………………………….psychiatrist Thomas Szasz

"Not guilty by reason of insanity." Really?

I haven't followed the case at all, but I understand there was a recent verdict of 'not guilty by reason of insanity' in the case of a Hawkes Bay mother who killed her six-day-old son by smashing his skull.

I'll just pause for a moment and let that news and the verdict sink in.

In the High Court in Napier yesterday [Friday] Justice Paul Heath found the mother not guilty of murdering her baby on the grounds of insanity and ordered she be detained as a special patient, as her lawyer Bill Calver had requested...

The crown prosecutors did not challenge the five psychiatric reports presented to the court, all of which pointed to the woman being legally insane at the time.

The woman was "legally insane at the time," and the court concluded this provided a reason to declare her not guilty of murder.

What do you think? Do you think being insane makes you any less culpable? Do you think being declared insane by psychiatrists -- however many of them declare it -- somehow absolves someone of responsibility for their actions?

I don't. I'm all in favour of abandoning the 'insanity defence' altogether.

If you can commit murder, it might be said that at first sight that was already proof of insanity. But the main point surely is that people must be held responsibility for their actions. Drunkenness, drug-taking, PMT, post-natal depression, "my team just lost," etc. -- none of these provide an excuse for theft or assault, for beating the kids, for kicking the cat, or for bludgeoning to death your new-born son.

Allowing a defence of 'not guilty on the grounds of insanity' makes a murder victim no less dead, and is an injustice to their memory.

That said, I'm not in favour of state treatment of 'mental illnesses' either. In my view, the only reason to lock someone up is when they have committed a provable crime -- an actual initiation of force or fraud against another. In that, I'm entirely in agreement with psychiatrist Dr Thomas Szasz who in books like The Myth of Mental Illness questions the idea of mental illness altogether, and in The Therapeutic State challenges the state's role in locking people up for no more reason than having been declared "mentally ill."

In Szasz's view, there are certainly organic conditions that cause brain problems that in many cases can be cured relatively easily with medication -- and the illness then is a specific and curable physical illness, not a mental condition which is often only a symptom of the illness itself.

"True brain diseases," says Szasz, "are the province of neurologists, not psychiatrists." Labelling as "mental illness" the symptoms of an organic physical condition is as wrong as calling 'thinking problems' or 'problems with living' "illnesses," and declaring that the state can or should somehow cure or treat or lock people up for these afflictions.

As Szasz points out, such a thing is very, very dangerous indeed.

The state's only case for locking people up, says Szasz, should be for some crime they have actually committed, not for being, by the state's definition, "mentally ill." I agree with him. And murder is very much something for which they should be locked up.

You can read a good interview with Szasz here in Reason Magazine: 'Curing the Therapeutic State.'

LINKS: Baby-killing mother was insane - Hawkes Bay Today
'Curing the therapeutic state' - Reason Magazine
The Thomas Szasz Cybercenter for Liberty and Responsibility -- Thomas Szasz's official website
'The Myth of Mental Illness' - Text of the original 1960 paper that formed the basis of Szasz's first book - Psych Classics, York UniversityThe Therapeutic State - Amazon.ComThe Myth of Mental Illness - Amazon.Com

RELATED: Law, Science, Politics-NZ, Health

What about those Scientologists, eh?

From the wacko-watch files: Rolling Stone magazine has a story that The Szasz Blog says unlocks "the complex code of America's most mysterious religion."

But here's a question: everyone but Tom Cruise knows how silly Scientologists' beliefs and practices are; but why are they any less silly than the beliefs and practices of the mainstream
religions?

LINKS: Inside Scientology - Rolling Stone

TAGS: Religion, Nonsense