{"product_id":"antipsychiatry-quackery-squared-9780815609438","title":"Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared","description":"\u003cp\u003eMore than fifty years ago, Thomas Szasz showed that the concept of mental illness--a disease of the mind--is an oxymoron, a metaphor, a myth. Disease, in the medical sense, affects only the body. He also demonstrated that civil commitment and the insanity defense, the paradigmatic practices of psychiatry, are incompatible with the political values of personal responsibility and individual liberty. The psychiatric establishment's rejection of Szasz's critique posed no danger to his work: its defense of coercions and excuses as \"therapy\" supported his argument regarding the metaphorical nature of mental illness and the transparent immorality of brutal psychiatric control masquerading as humane medical care. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn the late 1960s, the launching of the so-called antipsychiatry movement vitiated Szasz's effort to present a precisely formulated conceptual and political critique of the medical identity of psychiatry. Led by the Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing, the antipsychiatrists used the term to attract attention to themselves and to deflect attention from what they did, which included coercions and excuses based on psychiatric principles and power. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFor this reason, Szasz rejected, and continues to reject, psychiatry and antipsychiatry with equal vigor. Subsuming his work under the rubric of antipsychiatry betrays and negates it just as surely and effectively as subsuming it under the rubric of psychiatry. In \u003ci\u003eAntipsychiatry: Quackery Squared, \u003c\/i\u003e Szasz powerfully argues that his writings belong to neither psychiatry nor antipsychiatry. They stem from conceptual analysis, social-political criticism, and common sense.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThomas Szasz\u003c\/b\u003e is professor emeritus of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. His books include \u003ci\u003eLaw, Liberty, and Psychiatry, The Manufacture of Madness, Ideology and Insanity, Ceremonial Chemistry, The Myth of Psychotherapy, Psychiatry: The Science of Lies, \u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Medicalization of Everyday Life, \u003c\/i\u003eall published by Syracuse University Press.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Syracuse University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50514564940050,"sku":"9780815609438","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_c55d1f92-db97-4551-b004-cb6f5338a1a6.jpg?v=1730987316","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/antipsychiatry-quackery-squared-9780815609438","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}