In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined. – Thomas Szasz
Strictly speaking, assisted suicide is an oxymoron. –Thomas Szasz
From the NY Times:
Thomas Szasz, a psychiatrist whose 1961 book “The Myth of Mental Illness” questioned the legitimacy of his field and provided the intellectual grounding for generations of critics, patient advocates and antipsychiatry activists, making enemies of many fellow doctors, died Saturday at his home in Manlius, N.Y. He was 92.
He died after a fall, his daughter Dr. Margot Szasz Peters said.
Dr. Szasz (pronounced sahz) published his critique at a particularly vulnerable moment for psychiatry. With Freudian theorizing just beginning to fall out of favor, the field was trying to become more medically oriented and empirically based. Fresh from Freudian training himself, Dr. Szasz saw psychiatry’s medical foundation as shaky at best, and his book hammered away, placing the discipline “in the company of alchemy and astrology.”
Dr. Szasz argued against coercive treatments, like involuntary confinement, and the use of psychiatric diagnoses in the courts, calling both practices unscientific and unethical. He was soon placed in the company of other prominent critics of psychiatry, including the Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman and the French philosopher Michel Foucault.
Edward Shorter, the author of “A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac” (1997), called Dr. Szasz “the biggest of the antipsychiatry intellectuals.”
You can read the rest of the long – but hardly comprehensive – obituary here. If you want to find more about Szasz and his work, I recommend checking out the Thomas S. Szasz Cybercenter for Liberty and Responsibility.
Anyone who is interested in various perspectives and arguments against legalized assisted suicide should check out some of his writing on the topic. You are guaranteed to strongly disagree with some of what he wrote over the years. Other material will give you food for thought – and some different ways of thinking about the issues, especially when talking to libertarians.
You can read excerpts from two essays Szasz wrote dealing with assisted suicide, along with active links to the entire essays by clicking here.