Admittedly, I haven’t read his work but from what I’ve read of it, it seems entirely out of line with modern understanding of mental illness. He had his heart in the right place and there’s still an argument to be made about “when is this symptom a clinical presentation vs just a ‘typical’ behavior,” but we just know so much more about brain chemistry now. Mental illness is real.
His stuff is about as relevant to modern treatment as Freud. Cool to talk about but it doesn’t help anyone in treatment.
I thought it was more like “mental illness is all normal thinking, so we need to stop treating it,” which just seems like an overreaction to overdiagnosis
Admittedly, I haven’t read his work but from what I’ve read of it, it seems entirely out of line with modern understanding of mental illness. He had his heart in the right place and there’s still an argument to be made about “when is this symptom a clinical presentation vs just a ‘typical’ behavior,” but we just know so much more about brain chemistry now. Mental illness is real.
His stuff is about as relevant to modern treatment as Freud. Cool to talk about but it doesn’t help anyone in treatment.
Edit: went to look him up again and found this, which I thought was interesting: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/thomas-szasz-myth-migraine
He was a libertarian, so that’s not surprising. He wasn’t sane himself.
He claimed most people who were mentally ill were faking it.
I thought it was more like “mental illness is all normal thinking, so we need to stop treating it,” which just seems like an overreaction to overdiagnosis
No, he really thought they were faking it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz#"Patient"_as_malingerer
Interesting, what a weird dude