Is Mental Illness Real? - Thomas Szasz

Learn some of the key theories from the controversial Thomas Szasz. Thomas Szasz has been blamed for an anti-psychiatry movement that coincided with the counterculture of the 1960s. However, some of Szasz's insights about the etiology of psychological distress are meaningful even in today's era of greater awareness of mental health issues.

Thomas Szasz most controversial book is entitled The Myth of Mental Illness (link below). In the book, Szasz challenges the medicalization of psychological distress, claiming that mental illness is a metaphor for "problems in living".

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[Tierneycristian]

I was severely traumatized years ago as a teenage, got diagnosed with OCD. Spent my whole life fighting OCD. I suffered severe depression and mental disorder. Not until my wife recommended me to psilocybin mushrooms treatment. Psilocybin treatment saved my life honestly. 8 years totally clean. Never thought I would be saying this about mushrooms.

[robertdabob]

Freeing people from the brutal and highly suggestive label that disempowers their own role in their psychological well being is the epitome of true empathy.

[Questionairan]

I think it’s truth to what he’s saying. When you’re in certain social settings, institutions and programs for a prolonged period of time it can drive you crazy. You’re surrounded by people telling you how you’re supposed to act look and feel when in reality you’re comfortable just the way you are. If multiple people are always telling someone they have a problem eventually they may start to believe it and then you really do have a problem even though there was no problem to begin with other than conforming to other people standards.

[kevincurrie-knight]

From what I've seen, Szasz is against one and really only one thing: the medicalization of mental life. He is not, as you've noted, against the idea that psychological problems can be real problems. Nor is he against the idea that we can often use drugs to aid in alleviating them. Nor is he against psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, as he points out in his book The Ethics of Psychanalysis.

What he is against is 'pretending' (as he'd see it) that what any of this is is diagnosing and fixing of an illness in any sense but analogy. He sees that when we treat this medical talk literally, it can and does justify a lot of bad things, from people seeing themselves as having broken brains to in the worst cases, the most heinous of coercion in the name of medical science.

[BL-sdqw]

When you are being abused, being assertive doesn't necessarily mean that you can change the other person's behavior. Because you are not just you. You are you and your circumnstances. And people need to focus on changing people's life circumnstances to help them, not to change the person themselves. If a friend is being abused, you can let them stay at your home and call the police... but not drug them.

[aisforapple]

It all goes back to trauma.

We are traumatized, often before we realize, and subconsciously traumatize others, partially due to our own previous trauma, trying to make the best of bad situations, and subsequently, causing far more damage than we could ever possibly know.

[LepenskiVir]

This is so important and I'm glad that such people like Szasz existed. I hope his work will be valued more and more in the future. I also think that the medical community is aware of this but societies do still operate on power and coercion, so they just shrug their shoulders?

[JohnSmith-lkcy]

100% agree with this. I think mental illness is a perfectly normal and expected reaction to trauma caused by parents and other narcissists, and stress cause by a society run by narcissists. I have seen the effects of childhood trauma on my siblings from by two narcissistic parents. I was the oldest of six and escaped with a pleaser, fixer mentality. I married a narcissist. That was my suffering but my other siblings had it much worse. The youngest two in particular - one who was utterly neglected as a child was bi polar and died last year aged 45 and the other is an alcoholic, borderline and has had a hard time all her life. ALL mental issues are caused by environment. No one will ever persuade me otherwise.

[stuartschneiderman]

Szasz was an existentialist, he believed like Jean Paul Sartre that human beings were fundamentally free and responsible. Like Sartre Sasz acknowledges that freedom and responsibility are burdensome and that for a variety of reasons that burden lays more heavy on some people's shoulders than others. This being the case some people escape from freedom into relations based on power and control-being controlled or what is commonly known as the psychiatric system of patient psychiatrist relations. He does come across at times as unfeeling though I don't believe he was anything but a decent man who wanted people to act responsibly and honestly. As a professor of psychiatry he mentions hysteria every now and then because it was the category that started the ball rolling for psychoanalysis. Also because of Sartre's well known dictum that hysteria is a lie without a liar, Sartre's point being that mental illness isn't a true illness but that the hysteric like all other types of 'mentally ill people' is operating at a pre-reflective level and isn't knowingly or reflectively telling lies-they believe their own deceit.

[txxrxxx]

Interesting, interesting, interesting!
Our pastor, John MacArthur, lit up the internet a few months ago by making his assertion that there is no such thing as mental illness. Wow! And he used many of the same arguments presented in this video. I’m glad and it is educating to see this is nothing new. I even think he must have used Thomas Szasz as a source for his view.

[redscarecomixx]

Cool theory but how does he explain genetic disposition towards a specific mental illness?

[stevekaylor]

Mental health is the development of a mental + emotional dedication - a cathexis!

[Langkowski]

Humans did not evolve in the modern civilization, but we are flexible enough to adapt. But sometimes we are exposed to negative experiences, often over time, that we would never have been exposed to in a "natural" environment. Getting problems as a consequence is so natural that it would be unnatural not to get problems.
Dogs evolved from wolves, and have adapted to live with humans. But like wolves they use to be able to run free. Being tired to a rope all day long, or spending most of the life inside a small enclosure, gives both dogs and wolves problems. "Curing" them by giving them pills would just suppress the symptoms.
If you were straight, it was natural to have a partner and children once you were old enough in the old days (I'm not talking about arranged marriages). Today many spend their whole life being single, even those who don't want to be single.
And even with modern medicine, we also have physical problems that didn't exist before.
Mental problems are often natural reactions to unnatural situations.

[jah]

It's so difficult to get a clear answer about what Szasz believed. Did he believe that problems with brain structure or function did not contribute to symptoms associated with mental illness? Did he just think that the term mental illness was inappropriate, but that the suffering was real? Did he believe that genetics and biology played no part? Numerous studies by independent sources would contest these assumptions. I get that he didn’t want people to be taken advantage of, but (unless it's what he was saying) it appears his thoughts are the perfect ammunition for people to deny the reality of the suffering experienced by many and to blame them for this suffering.

[chauncygardner]

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

-Krishnamurti

[Sumtingwongbruh]

Twin truths. If only they incorporated him in modern psychiatry

[martinwright]

I am so grateful that you keep producing vids that often bring a person or subject that has been stored in an increasingly dusty memory or bookcase back into focus with an evaluation that is both similar to mine and dissimilar enough to cause me to think. So many ways to go with this but one thought that stands out is the notion of the anti-psychiatry movement and how he, together with luminaries such as Laing, were labelled (finding out by whom would be an interesting task) thus. More appropriate perhaps is the idea that he challenged psychiatric ideology (I think he defined ideology as ideas presented as facts) from within. In his introduction to 'Ideology and Insanity', a book I would highly recommend, he says "Modern psychiatric ideology is an adaptation - to a scientific age - of the traditional ideology of Christian theology." We might compare and contrast the reaction that his writings recieved with the religious notion of heresy.

[kentondragon]

Life sucks, life is hard, ppl suck..this won't change, so if that can't change; why not change yourself? 🤔🤷‍♀️

[msd]

Malingering... I think I've done that

[sundog]

Its a very grey area you can't just say its real or not, black and white, like the poeple it affects it depends on each individual case. Admittedly some people will use it as a scam but others are genuinely suffering because society expects too much from them.