The Psychiatrist at the Bar

IT IS A RARE THING, INDEED, when a reputable member of a profession places his calling upon the block of severe criticism. Yet this is the precise objective of Dr. Szasz’ “inquiry into the social uses of mental health practices.”

In a scientistic world, where the language of Newton and Darwin is used to justify the predations of Khrushchev and Hitler, “mental health” has become a euphemism for social control and normative decision making. In 1764, Marquis Beccaria first illuminated the problems raised by Dr. Szasz, in his Essay on Crimes and Punishments: “Liberty is at an end whenever the laws permit that, in certain cases, a man may cease to be a person, and become a thing . . . Thus it is that in some governments, where there is all the appearance of Liberty, tyranny lies concealed, and insinuates itself into some neglected corner of the constitution, where it gathers strength insensibly.” The tyranny of forensic psychiatry, says Dr. Szasz, consists explicitly in the fact that citizens accused of mental illness are no longer treated as persons, but as things. They are compelled to retrocede from a freely contracting citizen to a creature of status, whose very liberty is governed by a juridical application of dubious therapeutic theory.

RS

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Robert M. Schuchman

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IT IS A RARE THING, INDEED, when a reputable member of a profession places his calling upon the block of severe criticism. Yet this is the precise objective of Dr. Szasz’ “inquiry into the social uses of mental health practices.”

In a scientistic world, where the language of Newton and Darwin is used to justify the predations of Khrushchev and Hitler, “mental health” has become a euphemism for social control and normative decision making. In 1764, Marquis Beccaria first illuminated the problems raised by Dr. Szasz, in his Essay on Crimes and Punishments: “Liberty is at an end whenever the laws permit that, in certain cases, a man may cease to be a person, and become a thing . . . Thus it is that in some governments, where there is all the appearance of Liberty, tyranny lies concealed, and insinuates itself into some neglected corner of the constitution, where it gathers strength insensibly.” The tyranny of forensic psychiatry, says Dr. Szasz, consists explicitly in the fact that citizens accused of mental illness are no longer treated as persons, but as things. They are compelled to retrocede from a freely contracting citizen to a creature of status, whose very liberty is governed by a juridical application of dubious therapeutic theory.