Dr. Thomas Szasz, a psychiatrist at New York Don Quixote-like attacks on the psychiatric profession in 1960 and 1970, led him to a position of prominence and influence with their radical ideas fell into disrepute and disappeared.
Szasz died Sept. 8 at his home in Manlius, New York, his family announced. He suffered a spinal compression fracture resulting from a fall.
He rose to fame with his 1961 book, "The Myth of Mental Illness", which argued that mental illness is not a disease, but simply "life problems." In this and a series of successive volumes, he said not to use drugs to treat mental disorders with insanity as a defense against criminal acts and people committed to mental institutions against their will. He called the act "a crime against humanity."
In 1992, Szasz - pronounced "ZOZ" - said with courage Syracuse Post-Standard: "I am probably the only psychiatrist in the world who do not have clean hands I commit to I never gave him electric shocks which have never , ... never gave drugs to a mental patient. "
Perhaps his most controversial act was allied with the Church of Scientology founded the Citizens Commission for Human Rights, a group that is clearly opposed to psychiatry and its methods of treatment. Although he was not a Scientologist Szasz, has lent his collaboration patina of credibility to an organization inspired not by science but by a science fiction writer, according to his critics.
He later distanced himself from the church, but his association with the Commission and other views led New York authorities to block mental health teaching hospital in a state where residents with University New York State format.
The Crusader has emerged at a time when many critics have questioned some of the principles of psychiatry, including activities such as the diagnosis of women as "hysterical" when they refused to submit to the domination of men or request that homosexuality is a mental illness. Some critics also agreed that too "mentally ill" people were locked in an illegal way.
But Szasz, has actually thrown the baby with the bathwater, on the grounds that the majority of psychiatric diagnoses were poorly designed and without scientific basis.
However, their arguments introduced some new ideas, Dr. Robert W. Daly, a psychiatrist at SUNY Upstate Medical Center, Syracuse Post-Standard awarded to "The discussion on the use of coercion and forced treatment and all that, I had a real impact on the discussion of these items within the profession and within the law. has helped increase awareness of what in fact they were doing. "
In a 2006 profile in The New Atlantis, Szasz virtually admitted that there were windmills. "I really do not think I'm doing when I say that I was hoping not to have much impact on psychiatry. Psychiatry've seen all the time as more of the Catholic Church. Voltaire What impact do about it? If you think about what has happened since then, no, no, I did not expect any difference. "
Thomas Stephen Szasz is, April 15, 1920 in Budapest, Hungary. After his family emigrated to the United States in 1938, obtained a degree in physics from the University of Cincinnati in 1941. When he graduated in medicine from the University was the first of its kind in 1944.
He studied psychoanalysis at the University of Chicago and, except for two years in the Naval Reserve, he worked at the University in 1955 before joining what is now the SUNY Upstate. He remained on the faculty until his retirement in 1990, but continued writing and research until his death.
Two years after his retirement, he was sued for negligence by the widow of a man who committed suicide after six months Szasz told him to stop taking lithium for depression. The case was settled out of court, and finally gave up private practice Szasz.
More than half a century, Szasz has published 35 books and hundreds of articles.
His wife, Rosine, who died in 1971. He left two daughters, Dr. Szasz Margot Peters and Suzy Szasz Palmer, a brother, George, and grandson.
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