So last week My boss from my internship at DCF (The Department of Children and Families) formally DSS (The Department of Social Services) gave me some information he got off Wikipedia of Thomas Szasz. Included in his few handouts was a biography of Szasz. In addition, he gave me a few pages of quotes that Szasz has said I'll leave you with a few.
"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. "
"If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia."
The list sort of goes on. but the website is: Thomas Szasz Quotes.
There are an assortment of other quotes from a range of famous people.
In addition, I watched a debate between Szasz and Albert Ellis. Which I will do a review on this weekend. But just a little about the debate. It was from 1974 and the sound quality is horrid. However, there are a lot of great points that will be discussed at a later date.
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Hi, Annie.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to your impressions after watching the Szasz vs. Ellis debate. This tape is something of a Holy Grail for Szaszians (and others interested in Szasz's ideas). I've wanted to see this video for some time, but it's ridiculously expensive. Do you know if the transcript of the debate is available somewhere on the 'Net?
Frankly, I'm surprised your boss brought up Szasz at all. Szasz's views have long been out of fashion, as you know. Whereas he used to be one of the most famous psychiatrists (and philosophers of psychiatry) in the world, nowadays his views are considered by his colleagues to have been "thoroughly refuted" and "obsolete". The Brave New World is here now, after all; happiness and conformity through chemistry is the new orthodoxy.
Physicians are not supposed philosophize. They're not allowed to think about what it means to be a person trying to make sense of the chaotic world, and of her life; struggling to live the best way she can, trying (and often failing) to do the right thing. Human beings supposed to be biological machines, nothing more. And so, thoughts, feelings, behaviours and lifestyles judged deviant or "self-defeating" must be the result of the malfunctioning of the brain known as "mental illness". To think otherwise is to deny that the multi-billion dollar industry that is the psychopharma offers the only viable remedy for the inevitable suffering of human existence.
-P.