Book Review by Don Newman
Psychiatry is an imperfect science. According to some, much of the practice isn’t a science at all. This is the premise of the book, “Words to the Wise” by, strangely enough, the psychiatrist Thomas Szasz. Subtitled, a “medical-philosophical dictionary” this fascinating work takes the reader through an unusual examination of what we think, and how we think, on a number of subjects. Often challenging the conventional wisdom.
Szasz asserts, for example, that, “mental illness” should not be classified as an illness at all. Lacking any objective cause or physical correlation, mental illness actually has its roots in the abandonment of personal responsibility. He carefully explains how typically “illness” is associated with some abnormal physical lesion somewhere about the body, and that no such lesion has ever been demonstrated when it comes to mental illness. One can be “mentally ill” for decades and there is never any physical correlation.
As a consequence mental illness cannot be properly called a “disease” according to Szasz. The real purpose in designating mental illness in this manner is to facilitate the employment of the legions of psychiatrists, psychologists and “mental health workers,” as well as providing justification for many of the medications promulgated by drug companies, all which benefit by this bogus definition.
One of the central themes of the book is the fact that psychiatrists can have a person committed to confinement against his or her will, and without any court proceeding, simply because that person may be termed as, “a danger to himself or to others.” The whole of this nation’s constitutional guarantees are circumvented by this allegedly medical procedure. Szasz questions this practice as well as why well allow it to take place.
If a person commits a crime, that person should be properly incarcerated. If they do not, then they should not. But to allow a person to be incarcerated indefinitely because of the opinion of a single person, or even a panel, practicing an imperfect science, goes against every principle this country was founded upon. Yet we permit it because of a kind of collusion between psychiatrist and patient. To quote Szasz:
“The person who displays the symptoms of schizophrenia often pretends that he is not an agent. He acts as if he were an object.
“The psychiatrist who diagnoses a person as schizophrenic also pretends that the patient is not an agent. He treats him as if he were an object.”
This book is about much more than just mental illness though. Written from a libertarian perspective it is also focused upon the importance of personal accountability. Some of its most powerful passages concern the function of language. Again to quote:
“In the animal kingdom, the rule is eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.
“He who defines dominates and lives. He who is defined is subjugated and destroyed.”
Since this book is in dictionary form it is very readable. It covers a wide range of subjects all the while primarily focusing upon the relationship between personal freedom and our society’s current mania with “mental illness.” Once begun it is difficult to put down and in the final analysis it will change the way one views the world, for the better.
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