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- Economic (X)
- 80
- Personal (Y)
- 100
Where we'd place Thomas Szasz based on their public statements and/or writings. Take the quiz to see where you land.
Thomas Szasz
Psychiatrist/Author/Social Critic
Late Luminaries & Iconoclasts
In my view, the coercive apparatus of the state ought to be as separate from the professional treatment of medical illness as it is from professional treatment of spiritual illness. Such a separation of medicine and the state is necessary for the protection and promotion of individual liberty, responsibility, and dignity.
Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) was a psychiatrist, author, and social critic who spent more than half a century challenging the use of psychiatry to justify coercion. A longtime professor at SUNY Upstate Medical University, Szasz argued that mental illness is not a disease in the traditional medical sense but often a label used to control behavior and suppress dissent. His landmark book The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) launched a sustained critique of involuntary treatment, civil commitment, and what he called the therapeutic state. Szasz emphasized personal responsibility, voluntary choice, and the right of individuals, regardless of diagnosis, to live on their own terms.
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