The Myth of Mental Illness

p. 267-268

Summary

The principle arguments advanced in this book and their implications may be summarized as follows:

1. Strictly speaking, disease or illness can affect only the body; hence, there can be no mental illness.

2. "Mental Illness" is a metaphor.  Minds can be "sick" only in the sense that jokes are "sick" or economies are "sick."

3. Psychiatric diagnoses are stigmatizing labels, phrased to resemble medical diagnoses and applied to persons whose behavior annoys or offends others.

4. Those who suffer from and complain of their own behavior are usually classified as "neurotic"; those whoe behavior makes others suffer, and about whom others complain, are usually classified as "psychotic."

5. "Mental Illness" is not something a person has, but is something he does or is.

6. If there is no mental illness there can be no hospitalization, treatment, or cure for it. Of course, people may change their behavior or personality, with or without psychiatric intervention. Such intervention is nowadays called "treatment," and the change, if it proceeds in a direction approved by society, "recovery' or "cure."

7. The introduction of psychiatric considerations into the administration of the criminal law -- for example, the insanity plea and verdict, diagnosis of mental incompetence to stand trial, and so forth -- corrupt the law and victimize the subject on whose behalf they are ostensibly employed.

8. Personal conduct is always rule-following, strategic, and meaningful.   Patterns of interpersonal and social relations may be regarded and analyzed as if they were games, the behavior of the players being governed by explicit or tacit game rules.

9. In most types of voluntary psychotherapy, the therapist tries to elucidate the inexplicit game rules by which the client conducts himself; and to help the client scrutinize the goals and values of the life he plays.

10. There is no medical, moral, or legal justification for involuntary psychiatric interventions.  They are crimes against humanity.

from
The Myth of Mental Illness
Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct,
by Thomas S. Szasz, M.D.
Revised Edition
Harper and Row, 1974