Congratulations Thomas Szasz! The Preface to the 50th Anniversary Edition of THE MYTH OF MENTAL ILLNESS

Next year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Szasz’s classic The Myth of Mental Illness.

Szasz has written a preface for the 50th anniversary edition. You can read it here on LewRockwell.com today. This essay deftly captures the controversies and changing battlefield over the past half century.

Szasz’s conclusion perfectly captures the transcendent issue:

Formerly, when Church and State were allied, people accepted theological justifications for state-sanctioned coercion. Today, when Medicine and the State are allied, people accept therapeutic justifications for state-sanctioned coercion. This is how, some two hundred years ago, psychiatry became an arm of the coercive apparatus of the state. And this is why today all of medicine threatens to become transformed from personal therapy into political tyranny.

I hope that many other publications and organizations turn their attention to Szasz’s work during the golden anniversary of his classic.