Thomas Stephen Szasz [] (* 15 April 1920 in Budapest) are an US-American psychiatrist and Psychoanalytiker of Hungarian origin. It is considered to joint founders of the anti-psychiatry as.

Life

After it was emigriert 1938 into the USA, it studied physics and medicine at the university of Cincinnati. it made its doctor of the medicine for 1944 and began training as Psychoanlytiker at Chicago institutes for Psychoanalysis. From 1956 to the retirement in the year 1990 Szasz was a professor for psychiatry to the State University OF New York in Syracuse. Thomas Szasz is Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and lifelong member of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He was also a director of establishment of the American "Citizens Commission on human Rights "(CCHR), which is dominated however by the Scientology sect organization. Szasz dissociated itself already briefly after the establishment 1969 both from the CCHR and from Scientology sect.

Teachings

Szasz justified its call as a vehement representative of the anti-psychiatry particularly with its Hauptwerk The Myth OF mentally Illness, in which he set up 1961 the theory that concepts are like psychological normality and movingness arbitrary definitions. Differently than diseases, which are based on biological causes, no clear causes could be found for most psychiatric illnesses. The diagnosis of a psychological disturbance takes place due to subjective evaluations instead of more objective, empirically examinable criteria. The demarcation of normality and crazy its serve only to force social conformity and deceive the danger in itself as instruments of power to the Ausgrenzung other-thinking one to be abused. On the basis of these considerations Szasz for a strict separation from psychiatry and state occurs. He condemns compulsory hospitalizations into psychiatric hospitals as injury of the human rights.

Writings

• Mental disorder - a modern Fundamentals of a theory of the personal behavior. Olten/Freiburg i.Br. 1972. (Orig.: The Myth OF mentally Illness. Foundations OF A Theory OF personnel Conduct. New York 1961.)

• Quite, liberty and psychiatry. Vienna/Munich/Zurich 1978. (Orig.: Law, Liberty, and Psychiatry. At Inquiry into the Social Uses OF mentally Health Practices. New York 1963)

• The production of the insanity, Olten/Freiburg i.Br. 1974. (Orig.: The manufacture OF madness. A comparative study OF the inquisition and the mentally Health Movement. New York 1970.)

• Cruel compassion. Over the segregation of unwanted humans. Frankfurt A.M. 1997. (Orig.: Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric control OF Society's Unwanted, New York 1994.)

• Schizophrenia. The holy symbol of the psychiatry, Frankfurt A.M. 1979. (Orig.: Schizophrenia: The Sacred symbol OF Psychiatry, New York 1976)

• The ritual of the drugs. Vienna, Munich, Zurich 1978. (Orig.: Ceremonial Chemistry: The ritual Persecution OF Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers. London 1974)

• Psychiatry, masked power, Olten/Freiburg i.Br. 1975

Related links

• The Thomas S. Szasz Cybercenter for Liberty and Responsibility
• Biography into German

Articles in category "Thomas Szasz"

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