Thomas Szasz - A short talk
I found this video the other day on YouTube and I wanted to share it with you (if you can’t play the video click the link below it)
Link: www.youtube.com
In this video Thomas Szasz explains the core of his philosophy in a 5 minutes video. It’s a good start for those of you who have never heard of anti-psychiatry or are just too tired to read through a lot of books and articles about this matter. I believe that things should be made as simple as possible (but not simpler 
as Einstein had said), and anti-psychiatrists, pretty much like most theorists who critisize modern society, have a tendency to ramble about for pages, while they could say just what they want to say in a couple of sentences.
Here, Thomas Szasz does exactly that. He attacks psychiatry asking the fundamental question "How can a behavior be called a disease?". He criticizes the use of diagnostic terms that really mean nothing and explains how these terms are used by psychiatry to control people. My favorite is his mention to drapetomania, a mental disease that was said to strike black slaves in the 19th century, when they tried to escape from slavery. Thomas Szasz, also, attacks the non-objectivity of the psychiatric method of diagnosis and warns against the detrimental effects psychiatrists can have on what he calls the two most precious things: children and liberty.
Thomas Szasz
Fot those of you who have missed them, I have written a few articles about this subject myself. I post them in the further reading section, along with some other resources.
Further Reading:
Psychiatry, anti-psychiatry and mental disease: Does psychiatry suck?
Clinical Psychology SUCKS or The Psychological Paradigm in the 21st century
The metaphor of “mental illness”
A Shocking Discovery and the History Of Psychiatry
Trapped: Mental Illness in America’s Prisons
Curing the Therapeutic State: Thomas Szasz interviewed by Jacob Sullum
