Electroshock Therapy Quotes

“Then something bent down and took hold of me and shook me like the end of the world. Whee-ee-ee-ee-ee, it shrilled, through an air crackling with blue light, and with each flash a great jolt drubbed me till I thought my bones would break and the sap fly out of me like a split plant.
I wondered what terrible thing it was I had done.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Electric shock treatment is paradigmatic of the interventions of Institutional Psychiatry; based on force and fraud, and justified by "medical necessity," the prime purpose of psychiatric treatments — whether utilizing drugs, electricity, surgery or confinement, especially if imposed on unconsenting clients-is to authenticate the subject as a "patient," the psychiatrist as a "doctor," and the intervention as a form of "treatment." The cost of this fictionalization runs high: it requires the sacrifice of the patient as a person; of the psychiatrist as a critical thinker and moral agent; and of the legal system as a protector of the citizen from the abuse of state power.”
― Thomas Szasz

“Psychiatry is a state religion, philosophically bankrupt, built on the outdated premises of dualism. Psychiatrists themselves are corrupt and confused. They set an example of suicide for their followers, sell to the highest bidder in our courts, suppress dissent and individuality in corporations and on campuses, and wield the weapon of stigmatization with utter disregard for individual rights and freedoms.”
― John Friedberg, Shock treatment is not good for your brain