Faith in Freedom: Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices

by Thomas Szasz

The libertarian philosophy of freedom is characterized by two fundamental beliefs: self-ownership is a basic right, and initiating violence is a fundamental wrong. Psychiatric practice violates both of these beliefs. It is based on the assumptions that self-ownership--epitomized by suicide--is a medical wrong, and that initiating violence against persons called "mental patients" is a medical right. Thomas Szasz raises fundamental questions about these assumptions. Are self-medication and self-determined death exercises of rightful self-ownership, or manifestations of serious mental diseases? Does deprivation of human liberty under psychiatric auspices constitute odious preventive detention, or is it therapeutically justified hospitalization? Should forced psychiatric drugging be interpreted as assault and battery on the person, or is it medical treatment?

The ethical standards of psychiatric practice mandate that psychiatrists coerce certain innocent persons. Abstaining from such "intervention" is considered malpractice--dereliction of the psychiatrists' "duty to protect." This duty reflects the fact that psychiatry is an arm of the coercive apparatus of the state, converting it to an institution Thomas Szasz calls "psychiatric slavery." How should friends of freedom--especially libertarians--deal with the conflict between elementary libertarian principles and prevailing psychiatric practices? In Faith in Freedom: Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices, Szasz addresses this question. After examining the theoretical underpinnings of the problem, with precision, he presents several analytical studies.

Expanding on ideas first developed in the groundbreaking and controversial works The Myth of Mental Illness, Ceremonial Chemistry, and Liberation by Oppression, Faith in Freedom is a strikingly original book, written by one of the foremost champions of psychiatric freedom. It will be of lasting interest to psychiatrists, sociologists, mental health practitioners, and students of political science.

276 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Thomas Stephen Szasz (pronounced /sas/; born April 15, 1920 in Budapest, Hungary) was a psychiatrist and academic. He was Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. He was a prominent figure in the antipsychiatry movement, a well-known social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, and of the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as of scientism. He is well known for his books, The Myth of Mental Illness (1960) and The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement which set out some of the arguments with which he is most associated.

Reviews

[Azgar Ishkildin]

"My holy of holies is ... freedom from violence and lies in whatever form they express themselves". With this citation from Anton Pavlovich Chekhov's letter to his publisher, Dr. Szasz started his foreword to the Russian edition of his fundamental work "The Myth of the Mental Illness."

The "Faith in Freedom: Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices"written 43 years later, provides the deepest one among the considerations, written by Dr. Szasz, of the threats to personal freedom, created by the merger of the state and psychiatry.

How and why the best minds of the West who have ever contemplated the issues of political and economic freedom, are loosing the presence of mind, when encountering the paternalistic rhetorics of psychiatry?

The answers to this question, considered with stellar examples from classics of liberalism to creators of the Austrian school of economics and to leading libertarians of the present time, are equipping the average person with the fundamental understanding of the problems of daily existence, which, strictly speaking, the reader is unlikely to find anywhere else.

In addition to everyone, the book will be useful to doctors, lawyers, and anyone interested in the issues of either economics and psychiatry, or the concepts of freedom and responsibility.