About the Author

Thomas Szasz is the author of over four-hundred articles and nineteen books; among the most recent are The Therapeutic State: Psychiatry in the Mirror of Current Events and Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences. He was both a practicing psychiatrist and a professor of psychiatry at the Health Science Center, State University of New York, in Syracuse.

Reviews

Szasz extends the conviction he first expressed in The Myth of Mental Illness that the concept of mental illness is both erroneous and immoral; ergo, the treatment thereof must also be immoral. Moreover, since there is no such thing as mental illness there cannot possibly be such a thing as psychotherapy. As always, Szasz underscores certain truths about abuses of psychiatric practice and makes a number of good points. Szasz’s important book will test the self-insight of anyone involved in the therapeutic process. To read this book is to be challenged in one’s thinking, excited by new ways of looking at today’s problems, irritated and annoyed, but never to be bored.