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Thomas Szasz Biography

Thomas Stephen Szasz (/sɑːs/ SAHSS; Hungarian: Szász Tamás István [saːs]; 15 April 1920 – 8 September 2012) was a Hungarian-American academic, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He served for most of his career as professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. A distinguished lifetime fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a life member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, he was best known as a social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, as what he saw as the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as scientism. His books The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) and The Manufacture of Madness (1970) set out some of the arguments most associated with him.

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Thomas Szasz Quotes

Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum.

Childhood, Fatherhood, Age, Minimum, Apparent

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.

Aware, Children, Easily, Education, Positive, Young

We achieve active mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick and the dying to hospitals. But hospitals serve the convenience of staff not patients: we cannot be properly ill in a hospital, nor die in one decently; we can do so only among those who love and value us. The result is the institutionalized dehumanization of the ill, characteristic of our age.

Love, Responsibility, Sick, Achieve, Mastery

'Statistics' show that 66% of clients are cured with psychotherapy; what statistics don't show is that 72% are cured without it.

Investing, Statistics, Clients, Cured, Show, Psychotherapy

Men often treat others worse than they treat themselves, but they rarely treat anyone better. It is the height of folly to expect consideration and decency from a person who mistreats himself.

Consideration, Decency, Kindness, Men, People, Treat

Marriages are said to be made in Heaven, which may be why they don't work here on Earth.

Earth, Heaven, Marriage, Marriages, Said

For Jews, the Messiah has never come; for Christians, He has come but once; for modern man, He appears and disappears with increasing rapidity. The saviors of modern man, the "scientists" who promise salvation through the "discoveries" of ethology and sociology, psychology and psychiatry, and all the other bogus religions, issue forth periodically, as if selected by some Messiah-of-the-Month Club.

Christian, Come, Issues, Jews, Men, Messiah

Delusion: belief said to be false by someone who does not share it.

Believe, Doe, Belief, Said, Delusion

A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.

Education, Teacher, Retirement, Maximal, Power

The wise treat self-respect as non-negotiable, and will not trade it for health or wealth or anything else.

Wise, Self, Wealth, Trade, Health

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.

Life, Forgiveness, Wise, Stupid, Forget

Sex is a body-contact sport. It is safe to watch but more fun to play.

Sports, Sex, Fun, Sport, Play, Watch

Man cannot long survive without air, water, and sleep. Next in importance comes food. And close on its heels, solitude.

Air, Close, Food, Men, Sleep, Water

Like the devout theologian seeing the Devil lurking everywhere, Menninger, the devout Freudian, sees aggression.

Aggression, Devil, Everywhere, Like, Sees, Theologian

Psychiatry is probably the single most destructive force that has affected American Society within the last fifty years.

Years, Medicine, Fifty, Probably, American

Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.

Medicine, Experts, Mendacity, Masquerading, Expert

So long as men denounce each other as mentally sick (homosexual, addicted, insane, and so forth) so that the madman can always be considered the Other, never the Self mental illness will remain an easily exploitable concept, and Coercive Psychiatry a flourishing institution.

Men, Self, Long, Considered, Denounce

'Psychotherapy' is a private, confidential conversation that has nothing to do with illness, medicine, or healing.

Healing, Illness, Medicine, Private

The great shift. . . is the movement away from the value-laden languages of. . . the "humanities," and toward the ostensibly value-neutral languages of the "sciences. " This attempt to escape from, or to deny, valuation is. . . especially important in psychology. . . and the so-called social sciences. Indeed, one could go so far as to say that the specialized languages of these disciplines serve virtually no other purpose than to conceal valuation behind an ostensibly scientific and therefore nonvaluational semantic screen.

Discipline, Humanity, Languages, Psychology, Sciences, Toward

Permissiveness is the principle of treating children as if they were adults; and the tactic of making sure they never reach that stage.

Adults, Children, Principle, Principles, Tactic

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