The Manufacture of Madness and Ideology and Insanity
Raico, Ralph
Mental Hygiene or Clean Brains The Manufacture of Madness by T. S. Szasz Harper and Row, $8.98 Ideology and Insanity by T. S. Szasz Doubleday Anchor, $1.95 (paper) Thomas Szasz, a Professor of...
...decisions of this kind are what make up the fabric of a person's life...
...Thomas Szasz is one of the most important writers on social and political problems in America today...
...Many people, and society at large, find such acts offensive, but instead of couching their disapproval in the traditional language of right and wrong, or in terms of personal preferences, they tend increasingly, under the guidance of psychiatrists, to speak of "mental illness...
...The original conception of Freudian psychiatry- in contrast to what had existed before, largely an appendage of prisons for the insane-was that the individual should be in a position to purchase the services of a trained expert to help him, at his own request and initiative, with various problems that may arise from the structure of his life-in regard to his family, friends and associates, job and boss, ability to work, etc...
...as social attitudes changed, so did the solemn "findings of psychiatric science...
...This has to do with the implications of the increasingly powerful ideology of the mental health movement...
...The violation of the libertarian principle of the rule of law implied here is obvious...
...The prejudice against masturbation eventually disappeared, and-aside from Russell Kirk's occasional sniping from his column in National Review-it would be difficult to find anyone willing to defend the old prohibition...
...rather it is question of behavior that is judged to be "diseased...
...As he says of writers like Hayek, von Mises and Karl Popper: "much of what I have said is merely an extension of their views into psychiatry and the mental health disciplines...
...Later, certain enthusiasts took the notion to be a medically serious one-it was presented as such-and proceeded with surgical intervention and the application of metal devices to impede the mischievous habit...
...The psychiatrist was to serve the client just as his physician and lawyer did...
...There is no organic pathological condition to be treated...
...But, on the basis of the thinking of the Mental Health movement, all these men are easily susceptible to such classification...
...and for life with a court order which...it is a mere formality to secure...
...Poor things...
...Nonetheless, state and national budgets for mental health increase by year...
...in Szasz's words: "...today, in many of our states, physicians have the power to imprison a person in a mental hospital (in actuality, a jail) for as long as fifteen days without a court order...
...The problem begins with the metaphor of mental "illness" and mental "health...
...Anyone who knows anything of the world, however, should be willing to concede at least this to Gay Lib: that it is ridiculous to define homosexual acts out of the universe of the human by some such weasel-word as "mentally ill...
...The libertarian, especially, will find it a delight to acquaint himself with the thought of this genuine freedom fighter...
...These are the decisions one must make for oneself...
...as with education, these budgets are taboo, sacrosanct...
...The money-relationship here provided the client (or "patient") with his protection...
...Surely, this can't be the final term of the spiritual epic of mankind: a state-subsidized mental health bureaucrat primly recording his verdict that all these men (as well as practically any other interesting personality-think, for instance, of any of the heroes of Shakespeare's tragedies) were simply "sick," "mentally unbalanced" or "emotionally maladjusted...
...In the controversy over sex -education in the public schools the two groups are allied, mutually reinforcing the purity and unquestionableness of their cause to such a pitch as to remind one of Woodrow Wilson himself...
...Similarly with homosexual acts...
...They are either wicked and degrading, or a matter of taste, or something everyone should try at least once...
...Its economic sub-structure is payment of the psychiatrist by someone other than the patient, and it is characterized by the psychiatrist's responsibility to the State, the "community" or, possibly, to no one but himself...
...In both fields, we are witnessing the creation of a vast class of state-subsidized intellectuals (or near-intellectuals), using their position of lack of any accountability to the "consumers" of their "products" to promote their own cultural ideals (which are usually those of the State, as well...
...it is only the know-nothings or the emotionally disturbed who could possibly doubt the burning need for the transfer of money and power...
...Mental Hygiene or Clean Brains The Manufacture of Madness by T. S. Szasz Harper and Row, $8.98 Ideology and Insanity by T. S. Szasz Doubleday Anchor, $1.95 (paper) Thomas Szasz, a Professor of Psychiatry at the State University of New York at Syracuse, has for a number of years been a phenomenon on the intellectual scene...
...If one proposes reducing them, one is-in the unconcious mind of the average educated person- oneself already half-way to "mental illness...
...An indication of the extent of the influence of the movement is that many of us no longer see these as mere metaphors...
...It is dishonest and dehumanizing, Szasz insists, to pre-empt such decisions by the use of the language of mental hygiene...
...That thousands upon thousands of individuals are incarcerated on the basis of hazy conceptions of "mental illness,"and then made to undergo the ministerings of psychiatrists as pure objects, with no voice in their own fates, appears as monstrous to men of good will all along the political spectrum...
...What is illuminating about this chapter in the history of psychiatric thought and practice (a hidden chapter-it is, oddly, not mentioned in standard histories of psychiatry, but Szasz provides footnotes) is the use of "science"-pseudo-science, of course-as a method of social control, in this case, as a prop for the ethic of sexual self-denial...
...State psychiatry, however, has been the rule throughout history, and it is the norm today in most of the world...
...His many books (such as The Myth of Mental Health and The Ethics of Psychoanalysis) and articles have made him a unique sort of contemporary culture-hero among knowledgeable radicals and conservatives, libertarians and liberals, and his crusading articles have appeared in both National Review and the New Republic...
...There is, however, another feeling that helps account for his high repute-a feeling which he has identified and championed and which also cuts across the usual political divisions, exerting an appeal on anyone with a high regard for this whole human enterprise...
...Ralph Raico...
...That professional moralists should have attacked masturbation through the centuries is understandable, if unfortunate...
...For we are not here dealing with anything that has been demonstrated to be a malfunctioning of the brain or nervous system (when it is, it becomes a problem for physiology, not psychiatry...
...Sex Education...
...While liberals and conservatives may sympathize with his view, however, the fact is that Szasz is a libertarian, one of ours...
...The individual purchased psychiatric sendees on the market, and the seller, by the nature of the situation, was made to serve the wants of the buyer...
...it defined the responsiblity of the psychiatrist quite clearly, and kept the client ultimately in control (whatever vissitudes might occur in the course of the analytical relationship...
...The manner in which personal and social value judgments are translated into the language of pseudo-medicine and then imposed on a gullible public is beautifully illustrated by Szasz by the history of the invention of a "mental disease": masturbatory insanity...
...But the "disease" in this case consists in the existence of certain values, choices, habits, patterns of fantasy, etc., in an individual, as "health" consists in different, and preferable, clusters of such elements...
...This issue, incidentally, has been very well treated by Mary Breasted in her recent book, Oh...
...That, for instance, what Augustine and Luther, Nietzsche, Rousseau and Dostoyevsky anguished over should now blithely be legislated upon through the obiter dicta of "mental hygiene" professionals must cause anyone with a modicum of respect for the human spirit to shudder...
...This is felt to be appalling and grotesque...
...In what way does this state of affairs, fairly familiar by now, infringe on human dignity and draw together people of conflicting social and political views who unknowingly agree on deeper levels...
...The parallels between education and psychiatry in contemporary America are sociologically most interesting...
...As things are now, it seems likely that the state-professors and state-psychiatrists will eventually be successful in whatever it is they are aiming at...
...How much better if they had led the life and enjoyed the mentality of a government psychiatrist...
...With all this, institutional psychiatry and its current rationale of promoting "mental health" serve a definite social purpose: to implement control of socially-undesirable activity that happens not to be actually against the law, or by means in addition to those provided by the ordinary law...
...This is shown with startling plainness in the Massachusetts statute, for example, which leaves a person open to involuntary mental hospitalization if he behaves "in a manner which clearly violates the established laws, ordinances, conventions or morals of the community" (cited in The Manufacture of Madness, p. 242...
...Partially this is because a main concern of his has been the fight against the principle of involuntary mental commitment, with which it is difficult not to sympathize...
...The limiting instance of such disregard for the patient is reached in the cases-they are multiplying- in which individuals are placed, by main force and against their expressed will, in "mental hospitals...
...The only test of the "illness" of the "mentally ill" is the judgment (on the part of psychiatrists acting as spokesmen for society) that their behavior is seriously deviant...
...His scope, erudition and power of argument, as shown in these books and in his other works, are remarkable, and there are whole topics (such as the parallels between the witch-hunting and Mental Health crusades) and a host of insights which there is no space here even to suggest...
...The creative application of libertarian principles in his work is evident and comes out clearly in his distinction between free and institutional psychiatry...
...What is at issue is that the great questions of right and wrong, of nobility and shame in human affairs appear on the point of being foreclosed by a caste of self-appointed high priests who happen to practice psychiatry and who have managed in more than one way to bring the power of the State to bear on their side...
...Part and parcel of a system of social control, the concepts of "mental health" and "mental illness" function as an ideology, in something like the Marxist sense: as a facade for the value judgments of psychiatrists (and their employers) and, indirectly, for their monetary and power interests...
...Of course, they always promote these personal or social ideals in the name of "culture" or "sanity" per se...
...To great effect (in a chapter in The Manufacture of Madness) he cites the founders of American, English and French psychiatry-Benjamin Rush, Maudsley, Esquirol-on the nature and consequences of this dread disease, the product of masturbation...
Vol. 4 • May 1971 • No. 6
