Posted by Larry Hoover on January 2, 2004, at 13:40:03
In reply to Re: The real problem cont.., posted by zeugma on January 2, 2004, at 12:53:04
> I recently spoke to someone about the use of psychotropic drugs, and he told me he was a disciple of Thomas Szasz, who apparently is a major influence on Peter Breggin and is a major player in the "anti=psychiatry" camp. He told me with a straight face that mental illnesses have nothing to do with the brain. I don't know what to say to this, except that when such a great difference in world view opens up, the conversation is over. No doubt Szasz and Breggin find my conviction that mental illnesses have causes in central nervous system abnormalities equally hard to account for.
Oh, you said the magic word, Szasz. No single theorist has so influenced psychiatric care, since the time of Freud.
Szasz's classic paper, "The Myth of Mental Illness", is a fascinating read. See:
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Szasz/myth.htm
Szasz is a gifted writer, but he is a sophist. He cleverly redefines words as he goes, until you think he has defined mental illness *in your own concepts*, as a social construct, but he does not. Still, many are left solely with his conclusions, failing to examine the sophistry that got them there in the first place.
There are many more of Szasz's writings at:
http://www.szasz.com/szaszwri.html
....if you are so inclined to explore the man more fully.
If Szasz's central thesis was correct, that "deviant" behaviour, that mental illness was a social construct, it could not be seen to respond so well to a drug, an herb, even so much as a nutrient. But it does.
I can only conclude that Szasz himself has never experienced that of which he speaks; his is a philosophy of petitio principii, "begging the question", where one must already adhere to the premise itself in order to arrive at the conclusion which supposedly proves the premise. Preaching to the choir. A circular argument. But Szasz wears no clothes.....
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:295371
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20031231/msgs/295770.html