Coercion as Cure
Coercion as Cure

Author: Thomas Szasz

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Published: 2011-12-31

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1412808952

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Understanding the history of psychiatry requires an accurate view of its function and purpose. In this provocative new study, Szasz challenges conventional beliefs about psychiatry. He asserts that, in fact, psychiatrists are not concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of bona fide illnesses. Psychiatric tradition, social expectation, and the law make it clear that coercion is the profession's determining characteristic. Psychiatrists may "diagnose" or "treat" people without their consent or even against their clearly expressed wishes, and these involuntary psychiatric interventions are as different as are sexual relations between consenting adults and the sexual violence we call "rape." But the point is not merely the difference between coerced and consensual psychiatry, but to contrast them. The term "psychiatry" ought to be applied to one or the other, but not both. As long as psychiatrists and society refuse to recognize this, there can be no real psychiatric historiography. The coercive character of psychiatry was more apparent in the past than it is now. Then, insanity was synonymous with unfitness for liberty. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a new type of psychiatric relationship developed, when people experiencing so-called "nervous symptoms," sought help. This led to a distinction between two kinds of mental diseases: neuroses and psychoses. Persons who complained about their own behavior were classified as neurotic, whereas persons about whose behavior others complained were classified as psychotic. The legal, medical, psychiatric, and social denial of this simple distinction and its far-reaching implications undergirds the house of cards that is modern psychiatry. Coercion as Cure is the most important book by Szasz since his landmark The Myth of Mental Illness.

The Letters of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb
The Letters of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb

Author: Charles Lamb, Jr.

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-09-05

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1501727516

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All of the available letters of Charles Lamb, a master of the English essay, and his sister Mary Anne published in this definitive, scrupulously edited work. The letters, many of them written to illustrious figures of the Romantic period, are generally agreed to rank among the finest in the English language. Transcribing where possible from the originals or facsimiles, Professor Marrs corrects textual errors found in previous editions, and he pays particular attention to establishing precise dates for the correspondence. He includes letters that were omitted from the last collection (published in 1935 and long out of print), and he has uncovered more than eighty letters never published before. The Letters of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb totals five or six volumes, and presents nearly 1200 letters written by Charles and Mary, singly or together. The correspondence is fully annotated, the volumes are illustrated, and the holographic idiosyncrasies of the originals are rendered typographically wherever possible. Rich in revelations about the extraordinary lives of the Lambs, these beautifully written letters are an inexhaustible store of information about the Romantic era and its major figures-Wordsworth, Keats, and Coleridge. The publication of unexpurgated and authoritative texts is an important literary event.

Coercion as Cure
Coercion as Cure

Author: Frank Villafana

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-12

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1351527762

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Understanding the history of psychiatry requires an accurate view of its function and purpose. In this provocative new study, Szasz challenges conventional beliefs about psychiatry. He asserts that, in fact, psychiatrists are not concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of bona fide illnesses. Psychiatric tradition, social expectation, and the law make it clear that coercion is the profession's determining characteristic. Psychiatrists may "diagnose" or "treat" people without their consent or even against their clearly expressed wishes, and these involuntary psychiatric interventions are as different as are sexual relations between consenting adults and the sexual violence we call "rape." But the point is not merely the difference between coerced and consensual psychiatry, but to contrast them. The term "psychiatry" ought to be applied to one or the other, but not both. As long as psychiatrists and society refuse to recognize this, there can be no real psychiatric historiography. The coercive character of psychiatry was more apparent in the past than it is now. Then, insanity was synonymous with unfitness for liberty. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a new type of psychiatric relationship developed, when people experiencing so-called "nervous symptoms," sought help. This led to a distinction between two kinds of mental diseases: neuroses and psychoses. Persons who complained about their own behavior were classified as neurotic, whereas persons about whose behavior others complained were classified as psychotic. The legal, medical, psychiatric, and social denial of this simple distinction and its far-reaching implications undergirds the house of cards that is modern psychiatry. Coercion as Cure is the most important book by Szasz since his landmark The Myth of Mental Illness.

Catalogue of the Books in the Manchester Free Library
Catalogue of the Books in the Manchester Free Library

Author: Manchester Public Libraries (Manchester, England)

Publisher:

Published: 1864

Total Pages: 1668

ISBN-13:

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"The Catalogue ... has been prepared with a view to accomplish two objects. One, to offer an inventory of all the books on the shelves of the Reference Department of the Manchester Free Library: the other, to supply ... a ready Key both to the subjects of the books, and to the names of the authors." - v. 1, the compiler to the reader.