Thomas Szasz is a psychiatrist and academic. He is infamous for his anti-psychiatry views, especially his argument that mental illness is a social construct created by doctors. What psychiatrists label mental illness is in fact a deviation from the consensus reality or common morality, Szasz says.
Well in my opinion... mental problems can cause very real suffering for people, but I do agree that there is a fine line between 'different from the norm' and stark raving mad. I've met people who could easily be judged crazy by modern western society, but in reality they weren't crazy at all... just different, living outside the expected norms of social behaviour.
Would we dub a person who spoke a different language crazy? No, because we understand that people often speak different in other countries. But what if we met somebody who was talking in tongues? They would be judged as crazy when more accurately, they are just different to the norm. Anyway, it's probably not a great example, but i'm trying to demonstrate how 'madness' can be dangerously open to interpretation - dangerous in the sense that the interpreter is likely to be subjective. So... is the person mad, or do they just make us feel uncomfortable? Or worse still, do they buck the norms of society and hence get labelled with a mental illness?
Why is it that so many people are on anti-depressants or anti-psychotic drugs? Perhaps there could be several reasons;
- The drugs are more easily manufactured, therefore; more widespread?
- More people are depressed or psychotic in today's society?
- Pharmaceutical companies are better marketeers?
Freud in 'Civilization and Its Discontents' wrote of the conflict between man's instinctive nature and the demands of society, hypothesising that the demands of society are inconsistent with man's natural instincts - which is a view that I agree with vigorously.
I think we live in an unnatural environment that promotes sickness and guilt, perhaps even; collective guilt. And as I have mentioned many times on this website, my aim is not to blame society (or anything else for that matter), my aim is to clarify
objectively the subjective experience of living, and it's consistency with human instinct.
Here are the quotes:- "A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong."
- "Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is."
- "Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence."
- "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."
- "Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic."
- "He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself."
- "In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined."
- "People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates."
References:
The Myth of Mental Illness By Thomas S. Szasz (1960)
Matt Emery - Author and Caveman
