Myth of Psychotherapy: Mental Healing as Religion, Rhetoric, and Repression (Revised)

by Thomas Szasz

Book Overview

This intriguing book undercuts everything you thought you knew about psychotherapy.

"Szasz extends the conviction he first expressed in The Myth of Mental Illness that the concept of mental illness is both erroneous and immoral; ergo, the treatment thereof must also be immoral. Moreover, since there is no such thing as mental illness there cannot possibly be such a thing as psychotherapy."--British Journal of Psychiatry

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0815602235
• ISBN13: 9780815602231
• Release Date: April 1988
• Publisher: Syracuse University Publications in Continuin
• Length: 258 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Widening the horizon- without drugs!

The author, Professor of psychology is not alone with his critics. Many more secular psychiatrists and psychologists are exposing their own profession! How? Szasz says that there is no such thing as mental sickness existing at all. He says that reason and psyche are not material. The body can become sick, because the body is material. But the soul is not material. Therefore the soul or mind cannot become sick. The further conclusion is that Psychology is not natural science, because natural science deals with material. In fact I read about it elsewhere! The author who is a jewish atheist asserts that psychiatry is a secular state religion and a social control system which disguises itself under the claims of scienticity, a pseudoscience that parodies medicine by using medical sounding words as if heart attack and heartbreak would not belong to two different categories of phenomenon. Think how dangerous the world is in which we live! You just need a bad government, or a doctor who dislikes you and faster than you can look you get a good treatment in a psychiatric clinic with the prognosis that you won`t see a flower field again in your life! Are you a fundamentalist? Take a detour if you see a psychologist! He might catch you! Szasz has also an explanation for Freud`s endeavour and success. "One of Freud`s most powerful motives in life was... to inflict vengeance on Christianity". He says that psychotherapy is "a fake religion that seeks to destroy true religion". How does the author know? E. Fuller Torrey whom the Washington Post has called the most famous psychiatrist in America said. "Psychiatry has been willing to sanctify its values with the holy water of medicine and offer them up as the true faith of `Mental Health'. It is a false Messiah." How can anybody be interested in despising psychology if he has no good reason for it? The author must be courageous. So far he has not been declared a lunatic from his enemies. This book is very negative about psychology. If you can take it you should take it. It is not yet confiscated! It makes you widen your horizon- without drugs!

Provocative Unveiling of the Real Essence of Psychotherapy

This is a brilliant book about the nature and roots of psychotherapy. It's too bad that more don't seem to read it. Szasz traces the roots of psychotherapy all the way back to the ancient Greeks and biblical times, showing that Socrates as well as other rhetoricians and religious leaders saw themselves as people who "cured souls" through words guiding people into issues of morality and virtue. Since it consists only in conversation, psychotherapy is thus seen to be a rhetorical act, not a medical treatment. Furthermore, Freud and Jung both made it very clear on various occasions that psychotherapy also belongs in the realm of religion, not science, though both tried to hitch it to the rising star of scientific respectability when it suited them. Finally, psychotherapy and psychiatric treatment rely very much on repression in the sense that they take away the patient's freedom and impose on him the expectations and beliefs of others about his behavior in a very arbitrary way. Szasz sees the most dangerous scenario as a world in which governments have the power to decide what treatments people should be permitted or ought to be forced to receive. He wrote this in 1978, and in some ways it seems prophetic as Americans debate the dangers of a national health-care system, which surely will include the repressive type of psychotherapy that Szasz warns us about. He shows the power of labeling and naming that psychotherapy already commonly exercises in condemning or else excusing various behaviors according to the fashions of current psychotherapeutic theory. For a liberating new look at a field whose concepts have brainwashed a great many, read this provocative and insightful book!

A Much-Needed Debunking of Psychotherapy

Dr. Szasz provides a refreshing break from the psychobabble that dominates so much public discourse. Psychology and psychiatry are not nearly as scientific as they pretend to be. There is a world of difference between the "mental health" field and the non-psychiatric branches of medical science.

A PIVITIOL STUDY

This book and this book in particular were pivitol in my true understanding of "mental illness". I just wish more doctors would read this book, and have half the guts szasz has when it comes to defending the victims of this modern witch hunt we seem to accept all to willingly as part of modern life.