Schizophrenia : The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry / Edition 1

by Thomas Szasz

Overview

First published in 1976, Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry examines the concept of schizophrenia and the origins of its classification as a disease. Szasz convincing argues that rather than a medical diagnosis, the word schizophrenia is a symbol employed by psychiatrists as a means of control.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815602248
Publisher:	Syracuse University Press
Publication date:	03/01/1988
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	237
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

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.

Editorial Reviews

Dr. Szasz mounts an incisive two-pronged assault on modern psychiatry and what he regards as its mirror-image, the 'anti-psychiatry' of R. D. Laing and his followers. . . . Timely and urgent reading.-- "Publishers Weekly"

Szasz argues that the word schizophrenia does not stand for a genuine disease, that psychiatry has invented the concept as a sacred symbol to justify the practice of locking up people against their will and treating them with a variety of unwanted, unsolicited, and damaging interventions. . . . Szasz is an incisive, exciting, and dramatic writer. He loves the clever analogy, the well-turned phrase, the dramatic surprise.-- "George W. Albee, Contemporary Psychology"

Szasz is a valuable critic and agent provocateur. . . . Szasz has much to say which requires answering.-- "Anthony Storrs, Spectator"

From the Publisher