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Article: Psychiatry's valid but dishonest reconsiderations.(Psychology)(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- USA TODAY
- Article date:
- March 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Society for the Advancement of Education. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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MORE THAN HALF a century ago, Thomas Szasz shocked the world of psychiatry with his then, and still, electric book, The Myth of Mental Illness. Since that time, he has been unmasking the invalidity of psychiatric practice and its raison d'etre: the diagnosing and treatment of mental illnesses. His reasoning through scores of major works and over 1,000 articles, reviews, and letters has been based on a simple, but profoundly true, insight--mental illness and mental health and their derivative concepts are metaphors, since the mind is not an organ.
From that concept, the entire mental health establishment intellectually has been reeling, while occupationally ...