He was an asshole who spent sixty years shitting over real science to promote his politics, and you're an asshole for trying to promote his politics at a digital wake.
my problem with Szasz though is different. He seems to accept the basic assumptions of mental illness that our society does, and therefore never frees himself from the problems of those assumptions. There is no scientific basis for these assumptions, as they form, effectively, the threshold questions under which one can try to make neurochemical inquiry into mental health. These assumptions are:
1. Mental illness, to the extent it exists, is objective and quantifiable.
2. Social context is irrelevant to mental health.
3. Therefore mental health is an individual issue.
Of course a libertarian will accept these assumptions because they are based on the assumptions of personhood behind that movement. But what if both of the first two are wrong? What if mental health is very much subjective and what if social context is an important factor in mental health? If so, then, not only is the science based on bad assumptions but so is Szasz's rebuttal to it, and mental health becomes more an art than a science.
None of this reaches the question of coercive therapy. The fundamental questions are who, when, and how (both regarding the coercion and the therapy). Obviously there are times when this is needed. But we should not ignore the dark side this has had throughout history.
> 2. Social context is irrelevant to mental health.
> 3. Therefore mental health is an individual issue.
None of those are positions Szasz holds. The first two are just kind or ridiculous – he said contrary things, a lot. They are pretty opposite to his actual positions. For the third, he is pro-individualist but the "therefore" is wrong, and also the topic "mental health" includes things like the insanity defense which aren't just an individual issue.
Your supposed anti-libertarian insights are basically correct – but Szasz already knew them and wrote about them.
Of course what is labelled "mentally ill" depends on the social context, rather than being objective. That was a major point Szasz made. Have you read his books?
> Obviously there are times when this is needed.
Here, where you advocate coercion, you have an actual disagreement with me and Szasz. This, not your points 1-3, is your basic disagreement with Szasz. It's the standard disagreement most people have: they favor coercion, he and I do not.
> In 1938, Szasz moved to the United States, where he attended the University of Cincinnati for his Bachelor of Science in medicine, and received his M.D. from the same university in 1944.[7]
Pretty much this. Having just heard about him today, it's clear his [Szasz] statements reflect technological limitations of yesteryear combined with intense personal bias.
Why anyone would still espouse the concepts this guy put forward is beyond me.
Szasz was indeed a deeply unpopular man, but progress often depends upon such people.
For instance, did you know that he was the first psychiatrist to claim publicly that homosexuality is not a disease? (In 'Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality', ed. by Judd Marmor, Basic Books, 1965)
Science has found biological symptoms for Alzheimer's and rabies. Unfortunately, these can only be firmly identified post-mortem and are thus not useful for diagnostic purposes. Just two examples if diseases with biological markers that are not useful.
> For instance, did you know that he was the first psychiatrist to claim publicly that homosexuality is not a disease? (In 'Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality', ed. by Judd Marmor, Basic Books, 1965)
A broken clock is right twice a day. When you claim mental illness doesn't exist in toto, then of course you will be "right" about bullshit mental illnesses like homosexuality.
Also, Szasz and Laing are closer to opposites than counterparts. See for example:
http://www.amazon.com/Antipsychiatry-Quackery-Squared-Thomas...
Quote from the book, by Szasz:
> In the late 1960s, a group of psychiatrists, led by David Cooper (1931-86) and Ronald D. Laing (1927-89), began to criticize conventional psychiatry, especially so-called somatic treatments. But instead of advocating the abolition of Institutional Psychiatry, they sought to replace it with their own brand, which they called "Anti-psychiatry." By means of this dramatic misnomer, they attracted attention to themselves and deflected attention from what they did, which continued to include coercions and excuses based on psychiatric authority and power. Thus, antipsychiatry is a type of psychiatry. The psychiatrist qua health-care professional is a fraud, and so too is the antipsychiatrist. In Psychiatry.The Science of Lies, I showed that psychiatry-an imitation of medicine-is a form of quackery. In this volume, I show that antipsychiatry-a form of alternative psychiatry-is quackery squared.
> For more than a half century, I have consistently asserted two simple but fundamental propositions: mental illnesses do not exist, and coercions justified by them are wrong. Anyone who seeks to help others must eschew the use of force. Not a single antipsychiatrist has ever agreed with these principles or abided by these practices. Subsuming my work under the rubric of antipsychiatry betrays and negates it just as effectively and surely as subsuming it under the rubric of psychiatry. My writings form no part of either psychiatry or antipsychiatry and belong to neither. They belong to conceptual analysis, social-political criticism, and common sense. This is why I rejected, and continue to reject, psychiatry and antipsychiatry with equal vigor.
Am I still allowed to talk to him on the phone? Email? Can I be within a kilometer of his house? Is it like a restraining order?
All the comment you replied to is saying is that if you notice a friend in trouble, spend time with him. You seriously think that is an awful thing?
My opinion : the dude sounds like an ass and his opinions are eye-rolling.
This being said, the experiences relating to mental illness are very real. The larger question is how we make sense of them as a society. For something like depression how much of the illness is cognitive? How much is biological? How much is social? Somehow that last question never gets asked.
> This being said, the experiences relating to mental illness are very real.
What's the logical basis for this pair of assertions? How can the "experience" be real while the illness is not?
What is the difference in value between a $5 bill and a $20 bill? Is this difference not both real and socially constructed?
I.e. why do you assume that what is socially constructed can't be real?
The question is, really, what goes into the experience and what are the limits to the current science. If it is socially constructed, the science is limited to the current cultural context.
I'm assuming you wouldn't say "pneumonia is socially constructed". If you did, I would read that as "pneumonia isn't real".
> The question is, really, what goes into the experience and what are the limits to the current science. If it is socially constructed, the science is limited to the current cultural context.
I honestly don't know what you're trying to say.
That's a complicated question. I probably would not say pneumonia is socially constructed. I would say that health insurance is, just like any other contract.
> I honestly don't know what you're trying to say.
Ok. Let's try again.
The science of mental health, like all science, rests on assumptions which are basically unscientific aspects of our cultural worldview. The creation of scientific theories is, after all, a creative endeavor and one cannot separate the unscientific assumptions that go into interpreting the data from the theory (see Heisenberg, "Physics and Philosophy").
Now, when studying things like physics this is a significant problem. We have multiple "true" theories which are ontologically and mathematically incompatible (see for example quantum mechanics and general relativity). This works in the physical sciences because truth is given a limited meaning, namely something that has predictive value. Thus two propositions can be both true, scientifically, even of they both can't be true logically. A simple way to paraphrase this is that scientific theories are merely models of behavior and are true to the extent that the model's behavior matches the observed behavior, but do not imply any deeper truth than that. (This is exactly parallel to correlation vs causation. Just because the behavior correlates does not mean that the model functions exactly like the modelled.)
This problem is manageable in the physical sciences but it is totally unmanageable when studying the human condition. The problem is that people exist in a social context and that is formative regarding the brain. Therefore, if you are studying mental health of middle class Americans, you have no real expectation that the findings will be perfectly applicable to, say, the aborigines in Australia.
This has some important ramifications. It means that the science can never tell us how culture fits into mental illness. The science has to start off with a assumptions about mental health and illness that are by definition cultural. These definitions and assumptions are not beyond question, and therefore the conclusions one can draw from the science is limited culturally, temporally, and geographically.
> This problem is manageable in the physical sciences but it is totally unmanageable when studying the human condition. The problem is that people exist in a social context and that is formative regarding the brain. Therefore, if you are studying mental health of middle class Americans, you have no real expectation that the findings will be perfectly applicable to, say, the aborigines in Australia.
That's reasonable.
> This has some important ramifications. It means that the science can never tell us how culture fits into mental illness. The science has to start off with a assumptions about mental health and illness that are by definition cultural. These definitions and assumptions are not beyond question, and therefore the conclusions one can draw from the science is limited culturally, temporally, and geographically.
I agree.
Your more verbose argument is reasonable and sound, and yet I find it inconsistent with your original statement.
Specifically :
"the conclusions one can draw from the science is limited culturally, temporally, and geographically"
vs.
"mental illness is socially constructed"
Perhaps I'm interpreting it too literally, but I can't find the evidence supporting that strong assertion.
For instance, most of the literature I could find does agree that there is a biochemical basis for schizophrenia. The literature also agrees that how it manifests, including prognosis and rates of remission, differs across cultures. Thus, it seems reasonable to state that certain beliefs regarding mental health are social constructs - but if there is a physical basis for the expression of the disease I don't see how it can be said that it itself is socially constructed.
For any interested, there's an interesting NYT piece on the subject[1]
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html?p...
Basis != the phenomenon though. But try reading Julian Jaynes' "The Bicameral Mind" which will give you an idea into at least one possibility into how culture fits into it.
That there is a biological aspect to mental illness is beyond dispute. However that does not make it a biological phenomenon. There is probably a biological aspect to language too. That doesn't mean that language is biologically determined.
Anyway, I need to go so cannot elaborate.
You mentioned your kids live with you. How hard would it be if they didn't? Does the fact that we stigmatize adults living with their parents and make mental illness into an individual problem contribute to it?
Given the problems I have, if they did not live with me, I likely would have died already.
For example, you might try reading literature with multiple different perspectives on the issue. Then try to figure out which ideas are right and why. (If you've already done this, forgive me, and please please inform me why Szasz is mistaken, I would love to learn something.)