" Szasz argued that the spectacle of the Western psychiatrists loudly condemning Soviet colleagues for their abuse of professional standards was largely an exercise in hypocrisy.

Daniel Burston, however, has argued that overall the published works of Szasz and Laing demonstrate far more points of convergence and intellectual kinship than Szasz admits, despite the divergence on a number of issues related to Szasz being a libertarian and Laing an existentialist ; that Szasz employs a good deal of exaggeration and distortion in his criticism of Laing's personal character, and unfairly uses Laing's personal failings and family woes to discredit his work and ideas ; and that Szasz's " clear-cut, crystalline ethical principles are designed to spare us the agonizing and often inconclusive reflections that many clinicians face frequently in the course of their work ".

In 1961 Szasz gave testimony before a United States Senate committee in which he argued that the use of mental hospitals to incarcerate people defined as insane violated the general assumptions of patient-and-doctor relationships and turned the doctor into a warden and a keeper of a prison.

They are often " like a " disease, argued Szasz, which makes the medical metaphor understandable, but in no way validates it as an accurate description or explanation.

Szasz argued that all these categories of people were taken as scapegoats of the community in ritual ceremonies.

* Death control: In an analogy to birth control, Szasz argued that individuals should be able to choose when to die without interference from medicine or the state, just as they are able to choose when to conceive without outside interference.

" Szasz argued that the prohibition and other legal restrictions on drugs are enforced not because of their lethality, but in a ritualistic aim ( he quotes Mary Douglas's studies of rituals ).

" Addictiveness " is a social category, argued Szasz, and the use of drugs should be apprehended as a social ritual rather than exclusively as the act of ingesting a chemical substance.

Thomas Szasz argued that minds are not the sort of things that can be said to be diseased or ill because they belong to the wrong category and that " illness " is a term that can only be ascribed to things like the body ; saying that the mind is ill is a misuse of words.

Other commentators, such as Edward Timms, have argued that Kraus respected Freud, though with reservations about the application of some of his theories, and that his views were far less black-and-white than Szasz suggests.

Szasz argued that the spectacle of the Western psychiatrists loudly condemning Soviet colleagues for their abuse of professional standards was largely an exercise in hypocrisy.

In this latter field, R. D. Laing, Thomas Szasz and Michel Foucault were instrumental in moving medicine away from emphasis on " cures " and towards concepts of individuals in balance with their society, both of which are changing, and against which no benchmarks or finished " cures " were very likely to be measurable.

Its igniting intellectual influences were Michel Foucault, R. D. Laing, Thomas Szasz and Franco Basaglia.

" In an article published in 1994 by American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz on the Journal of Medical Ethics he stated that " the classification by slave owners and slave traders of certain individuals as Negroes was scientific, in the sense that whites were rarely classified as blacks.

Szasz has indicated that his own views came from libertarian politics held since his teens, rather than through experience in psychiatry ; that in his " rare " contacts with involuntary mental patients in the past he either sought to discharge them ( if they were not charged with a crime ) or " assisted the prosecution in securing conviction " ( if they were charged with a crime and appeared to be prima facie guilty ); that he is not opposed to consensual psychiatry and " does not interfere with the practice of the conventional psychiatrist ", and that he provided " listening-and-talking (" psychotherapy ")" for voluntary fee-paying clients from 1948 until 1996, a practice he characterizes as non-medical and not associated with his being a psychoanalytically trained psychiatrist.

According to Szasz, despite their scientific appearance, the diets imposed were a moral substitute to the former fasts, and the social injunction not to be overweight is to be considered as a moral order, not as a scientific advice as it claims to be.

Concepts of criminal justice and its intersection with medicine were better developed in this work than in Szasz and others, who confined their critique to current psychiatric practice.

" Richard Webster notes that some of Szasz's arguments are similar to his, but that their views of hysteria and the work of Jean-Martin Charcot are quite different, since Szasz assumes that hysteria was an emotional problem and that Charcot's patients were not genuinely mentally ill.

Szasz said that involuntary commitment and other coercive treatments were unethical and unscientific.

In a 1994 article Szasz stated that " the classification by slave owners and slave traders of certain individuals as Negroes was scientific, in the sense that whites were rarely classified as blacks.

These sociologists did not believe medicalization to be a new phenomenon, arguing that medical authorities had always been concerned with social behavior and traditionally functioned as agents of social control ( Foucault, 1965 ; Szasz, 1970 ; Rosen ).

Szasz calls schizophrenia " the sacred symbol of psychiatry " because those so labeled have long provided and continue to provide justification for psychiatric theories, treatments, abuses, and reforms.

It became very well known in the mental health professions and was well received by those sceptical of modern psychiatry, but made Szasz an enemy of many doctors.

American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz insisted that psychiatric hospitals are like prisons, not hospitals, and that psychiatrists who subject others to coercion function as judges and jailers not physicians.

Szasz states that K. Fulford, A. Smirnov, and E. Snow, who correctly emphasize the value-laden nature of psychiatric diagnoses and the subjective character of psychiatric classifications, fail to accept the role of psychiatric power.

That's not what diseases are " Szasz cited drapetomania as an example behavior which many in society did not approve of, being labeled and widely cited as a ' disease ' and likewise with women who did not bow to men's will as having " hysteria " Psychiatry actively obscures the difference between ( mis ) behavior and disease, in its quest to help or harm parties to conflicts.

Actually, “ Jewish problem ” was the name the Germans gave to their persecution of the Jews ; “ drug-abuse problem ” is the name we give to the persecution of people who use certain drugs. Szasz cites Rep. James M. Hanley referring to drug users as " vermin ," using " the same metaphor for condemning persons who use or sell illegal drugs that the Nazis used to justify murdering Jews by poison gas -- namely, that the persecuted persons are not human beings, but ' vermin.

Believing that psychiatric hospitals are like prisons not hospitals and that psychiatrists who subject others to coercion function as judges and jailers not physicians, Szasz has made efforts to abolish involuntary psychiatric hospitalization for over two decades, and in 1970 took a part in founding the American Association for the Abolition of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization ( AAAIMH ).

During his career he publicly debated a vast amount of people who represented opposing views to his ; this included for example debates with psychologist Nathaniel Branden on Objectivism and psychiatrist Thomas Szasz on the topic of mental illness.

) A review by Paul Broks in The Sunday Times summarized its position as: " Like Szasz, Bentall is firmly opposed to the biomedical model, but he also takes issue with extreme social relativists who would deny the reality of madness.

Another famous heckler is Robert Szasz, who regularly attends Tampa Bay Rays baseball games and is known for loudly heckling one opposing player per game or series.

" According to American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, these authors, who correctly emphasize the value-laden nature of psychiatric diagnoses and the subjective character of psychiatric classifications, fail to accept the role of psychiatric power.

However, the Attorney General's decision was promptly challenged by famous psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, who insisted that psychiatry must never become a tool of political rivalry.

In 1938, Szasz moved to the United States, where he attended the University of Cincinnati for his Bachelor of Arts in medicine, and received his medical degree from the same university in 1944.

Szasz completed his residency requirement at the Cincinnati General Hospital, then worked at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis from 1951 – 1956, and then for the next five years was a member of its staff – taking twenty-four months out for active duty with the U. S. Navy.

According to Szasz, “ the therapeutic state swallows up everything human on the seemingly rational ground that nothing falls outside the province of health and medicine, just as the theological state had swallowed up everything human on the perfectly rational ground that nothing falls outside the province of God and religion .” Faced with the problem of “ madness ,” Western individualism proved to be ill prepared to defend the rights of the individual: modern man has no more right to be a madman than medieval man had a right to be a heretic because if once people agree that they have identified the one true God, or Good, it brings about that they have to guard members and nonmembers of the group from the temptation to worship false gods or goods.

Menninger's letter suggests he had been much closer to Szasz on issues in psychiatry than one might have suspected from reading Szasz's criticisms of Menninger.

They regarded compassion ( a virtue ) as an affect, neither admirable nor contemptible .” Thomas Szasz from his book " Cruel Compassion "

* Alan Moore's Supreme includes a version of Mxyzptlk called Szasz, the Sprite Supreme from the 19th dimension.

According to Szasz, the problem, from which psychiatric abuse stems, is psychiatric power that is just as prevalent in democratic societies as it was in the USSR.

As revealed in the foreword to the trade paperback form of The Last Arkham, Zsasz's name is derived from that of psychiatrist Thomas Szasz ; Grant saw the name while visiting a library.

According to Szasz, “ the therapeutic state swallows up everything human on the seemingly rational ground that nothing falls outside the province of health and medicine, just as the theological state had swallowed up everything human on the perfectly rational ground that nothing falls outside the province of God and religion .” Faced with the problem of “ madness ,” Western individualism proved to be ill prepared to defend the rights of the individual: modern man has no more right to be a madman than medieval man had a right to be a heretic because if once people agree that they have identified the one true God, or Good, it brings about that they have to guard members and nonmembers of the group from the temptation to worship false gods or goods.

Senior Fellow Bruce Benson received the 2006 Adam Smith Award, Research Analyst Gabriel Gasave received the Freedom Award for Brave Defense of Liberty from the Fundacion Atlas, and Senior Fellow Robert Higgs received the 1998 Templeton Honor Rolls Award on Education in a Free Society, 2006 Friedrich von Wieser Memorial Prize for Excellence in Economic Education, 2006 Thomas S. Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties, 2006 Lysander Spooner Award for Advancing the Literature of Liberty, and 2007 Gary G. Schlarbaum Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Cause of Liberty.