Thomas Szasz
Hungarian-American psychiatrist and activist (1920–2012) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Thomas Stephen Szasz (/sɑːs/ SAHSS; Hungarian: Szász Tamás István [saːs]; 15 April 1920 – 8 September 2012) was a Hungarian-American academic and psychiatrist. He served for most of his career as professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York.[4] A distinguished lifetime fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a life member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, he was best known as a social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, as what he saw as the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as scientism.
Thomas Szasz | |
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Szász Tamás István | |
Born | Thomas Stephen Szasz (1920-04-15)April 15, 1920 |
Died | September 8, 2012(2012-09-08) (aged 92) Manlius, New York, U.S.[1] |
Citizenship | Hungary, United States |
Alma mater | University of Cincinnati |
Known for | Criticism of psychiatry |
Spouse | Rosine Loshkajian (m. 1951; died 1971) |
Children | 2 |
Awards | Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged (1974),[2] Martin Buber Award (1974), Humanist Laureate Award (1995), Great Lake Association of Clinical Medicine Patients' Rights Advocate Award (1995), American Psychological Association Rollo May Award (1998)[3] |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Psychiatry |
Institutions | State University of New York Upstate Medical University |
Website | www |
His books The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) and The Manufacture of Madness (1970) set out some of the arguments most associated with him.[5]
Szasz argued throughout his career that mental illness is a metaphor for human problems in living, and that mental illnesses are not "illnesses" in the sense that physical illnesses are, and that except for a few identifiable brain diseases, there are "neither biological or chemical tests nor biopsy or necropsy findings for verifying DSM diagnoses."[6]
Szasz maintained throughout his career that he was not anti-psychiatry but rather that he opposed coercive psychiatry. He was a staunch opponent of civil commitment and involuntary psychiatric treatment, but he believed in and practiced psychiatry and psychotherapy between consenting adults.