Bücher von Thomas Szasz

Vor 50 Jahren sorgte Thomas Szasz mit seinem Buch "The Myth of Mental Illness" für Aufruhr. Es stellte das komplette Selbstverständnis der Psychiatrie als humanmedizinische Wissenschaft infrage. Ob jemand psychisch "normal" oder "verrückt" sei, sei eine willkürliche Definition, so Szasz. Anders als bei somatischen Erkrankungen finden sich für einen Großteil der psychiatrischen "Krankheiten" nämlich keine eindeutigen Ursachen.Heute, in Zeiten der Hirnscanner, die bunte Bildchen zeigen, deren Suggestivkraft hoch, deren Erklärungswert dagegen gering ist, feiert der Mythos der Geisteskrankheit erneut Triumphe. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser Entwicklung wird die Lektüre von Szaszs revolutionärem Buch zum Aha-Erlebnis. Seine Positionen decken sich auf interessante Weise mit Überlegungen aus der Systemtheorie, denn systemisch gesehen können biologische Faktoren nie das Verhalten eines menschlichen Individuums erklären.Die vorliegende Neuausgabe wurde vom Autor ergänzt, aktualisiert und in vielen Formulierungen geschärft. Für die deutsche Ausgabe wurde der Text vollständig neu übersetzt.

A defence of every individual's right to choose a voluntary death. The book contributes to the debates surrounding a significant ethical question facing our society: the right to suicide; physician-assisted suicide; psychiatric intervention for suicidal patients; and euthanasia.

Social anthropology, defined operationally in terms of what social anthropologists have done in the last fifty years, is the study and comparison of tribal societies and of small fields of social life with emphasis on the role of custom

Social anthropology, defined operationally in terms of what social anthropologists have done in the last fifty years, is the study and comparison of tribal societies and of small fields of social life with emphasis on the role of custom

A study of the history and present state of psychiatry. It compares the oppression of the slave by the master with that of the mental patient by the psychiatrist - one defining domination as liberation from the shackles of ignorance, the other as liberation from the shackles of mental illness.

Looks at how Virginia Woolf, as well as her husband Leonard, used the concept of madness and the profession of psychiatry to manage and manipulate their own and each other's lives. The author interprets Virginia Woolf's life and work as expressions of her character, and her character as the "product" of her free will.

.In Our Right to Drugs, Thomas Szasz shows that our present drug war started at the beginning of this century, when the American government first assumed the task of protecting people from patent medicines.

Challenges conventional beliefs about psychiatry. The author 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.

In this brilliantly original and highly accessible work, Thomas Szasz demonstrates the futility of analyzing the mind as a collection of brain functions.

This work highlights how the introduction of third-party payers into medicine has altered the relationship between doctor and patient. It explains why patients are increasingly dissatisfied with the medical care they receive, and doctors with the way they have to practice medicine.