Szasz was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1920. He came to the United States at the age of 18 and attended the University of Cincinnati, receiving a bachelor's degree with honors in physics in 1941. He received a medical degree from the University of Cincinnati, College of Medicine in 1944. He served his psychiatric residency at the University of Chicago Clinics from 1946-48 and underwent psychoanalytic training at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis from 1947-50.
Szasz is one of the best known figures in contemporary psychiatry throughout the world. Of his two dozen books, the best known and the one that threw him into the spotlight is The Myth of Mental Illness, in which he asserts there is no such thing as mental illness; this proposition has brought him into conflict with his psychiatric colleagues. Instead of mental illness, Szasz calls it human behavior. Szasz believes medicine and psychiatry should never mix. He never prescribes drugs to patients, and he abhors shock therapies.
"Szasz believes that Freud's work was rhetoric," said Paul Sagal, head of the philosophy department at New Mexico State University. "It's not that he discounts all of Freud's ideas, but he won't call it science or medicine.... When he first published his ideas, to criticize Freud and psychoanalysis was quite radical though the criticism was rooted in the ideas of Viennese cultural critic Karl Kraus."
Among his many books are The Manufacture of Madness, Insanity, Our Right to Drugs, The Theology of Medicine and his latest, Cruel Compassion.
Szasz is currently a professor emeritus of psychiatry at the SUNY Health Science Center in Syracuse. He is also a CATO lecturer ; the Cato Institute is a prominent public policy think tank located in Washington, D.C. dedicated to the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, and peace. Szasz also tours the country as a lecturer.
. The listserv NUVUPSY: The List for Discussions of Sociological, Political and Existential Issues in Psychology and Psychiatry is a discussion group dedicated to the therapeutic state as described by Thomas Szasz (1963) and how this relates to clinical, legal, and public policy. To Sign On: Send the message "subscribe nuvupsy your-real-name" to listserv@sjuvm.stjohns.edu
Sociologist Amitai Etzioni is President of the American Sociological Association and founder of two research institutions -- the International Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics and the Center for Policy Research. Before joining George Washington University he served as the Thomas Henry Carroll Ford Foundation Professor at the Harvard Business School and was a Senior Adviser in the White House from 1979-1980. For 20 years he served as Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. He is the author of fourteen books.
Amitai Etzioni has championed a new intellectual movement whose purpose is to put right what ails society by, in Etzioni's words," people committed to creating a new moral, social and public order based on restored communities, without allowing Puritanism or oppression."
Etzioni is currently involved with the Communitarian Network at George Washington University. He also tours the U.S. as a lecturer.
In the Borzoi, read Szasz's "Drug Prohibition" and Etzioni's "When Rights Collide."
Szasz takes a dim view of government regulation. He views the government as a repressive parent who must control its children (the citizenry) by taking away their independence. Szasz claims government should openly debate controversial issues without dictating final decisions citizens must make. So, the government and the medical authorities may present evidence that heroin is harmful or deadly, but they should not make the purchase and injection of it a crime punishable by imprisonment--or, in the case of Methodone programs, forced "treatment."
Szasz worries about the abuse of state power, of citizens handing over to their government too much control over their minds or bodies. This is where his therapeutic/theocratic state idea applies. Szasz compares the alliance between the state and the medical establishment (powerful organizations such as the AMA) to the union of church and state during the Spanish Inquisition. During that time, people were tortured and murdered because they did not follow the official religion (Roman Catholicism). Those who deviated from that norm felt the full force of state power to enforce its standard of morality. Likewise, Szasz sees people today being ostracized and punished for wanting to medicate themselves in ways which aren't officially approved of by the government and the medical authorities. Laetrile is a modern day example. When this "drug" was touted as a cure for cancer, terminally ill patients naturally wanted to try it. But the FDA did not grant approval based on its findings that the "drug" did not work. So, people who still wanted it were forced to go to Mexico to buy it or receive treatment in clinics there. Even if the drug was quackery, Szasz argues, the medical establishment and federal government had no right to take away from US citizens their right to make health care decisions about their own bodies. To Szasz, centralizing regulatory control in a government bureaucracy which relies on medical "experts" is a worse choice than letting the citizens take a worthless (or even harmful) drug.
As further support, he calls into doubt whether we can trust "experts" whose opinions change with the times and are therefore arbitary and often contradictory. Alchohol is an example. At one time in US history, the government banned alcohol only to be forced via a Constitutional amendment to reinstate its legal status. Masturbation was once thought by medical authorities to be a cause of insanity or a sign of moral turpitude--today, it is regarded as a normal, healthy activity. So, if standards about what is acceptable change over time depending on who is in power and what their moral biases are, how can we trust a government which won't let us buy heroin or cocaine legally (since they are dangerous drugs) but has no problem earning tax revenue off products like liquor and cigarettes--products known to cause tremendous damage and death. Szasz's main argument is this--it is not the substance itself, its chemical properties, which drives policy decisions about its legality; it is the arbitrary moral codes of those in power which define some activities as sinful and others as praiseworthy.
Etzioni wants us to believe that government has a duty to protect its citizens from harm; part of that duty entails a recognition that human beings are flawed and perhaps not naturally trustworthy to make their own decisions without strong guidance and a sense of the consequences which will befall them if they choose wrong. The law sets a common standard above individual interest or choice. For a society to work in harmony there must be defined boundaries; the individual must have a means for measuring how his/her pursuits coincide or conflict with others'. Etzioni argues on behalf of social responsibility, an ethic in which individual agree to abide by common rules of acceptable behavior for the good of all. We need such agreement because some resources are not personally property but communal. The air and water, for instance, do not belong to any one person or generation; therefore, governments enact laws which make it illegal for companies or individuals to dump toxic waste or burn noxious chemicals. People agree to have their individual freedoms curtailed in order to protect a shared resource which all depend on. To deter irresponsible individuals, the law sets up strict punishments in an effort to maintain the social contract.
Etzioni reminds us that many people who shout long and loud about personal freedom care little for social responsibility or individual accountability. People who refuse to wear motorcycle helmets despite the law may be the first ones to eagerly draw on state funds to subsidize their rehabilitation when they get into an accident. Etzioni does not want a tryannical, despotic government. He believes in preserving our constitutional freedoms. But he wants us to answer the question about the line we draw between individual and group rights. Where does individual freedom/choice end and social responsibility begin? Etzioni believes in the law as our guide, as an external yardstick which helps us understand the impact on others of what we intend to do. Personal freedom is essential to any democracy, but so is social awareness and conscience.
This essay will be your midterm. It will be written in two hours in the English Department Computer Writing Lab at De Anza (lower level of the Advanced Technology Center--Room 102).
The writing assignment will be manageable within the two hours time limit and a page length of three doublespaced pages. The preparation you do on the reading material and credit assignment #4 will put you in a solid position to write effectively on an inclass essay.
The key to writing a good essay in two hours is understanding the issue at hand (what is the nature of the dispute between Szasz and Etzioni?) and how each author goes about presenting his particular viewpoint (what arguments and evidence do they present?).
Citizens in a democracy have always had to struggle with the proper balance between state power and individual liberty, between a strong centralized authority and a deregulation. Is freedom of choice, individual liberty, an absolute value? Or is individual choice a relative value? (Sometimes we make our own decisions; othertimes we have decisions made for us which are binding upon us--we must accept them or else be punished). How we solve this on-going equation helps determine how repressive or just our society is: How do we mediate between the two extremes of libertarianism and despotism? between extreme liberalism and extreme conservativism?
A middle ground between the two poles is the synthesis which the dispute between Szasz and Etzioni can hopefully bring about.
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