25 Facts About Thomas Szasz

Thomas Stephen Szasz was a Hungarian-American academic and psychiatrist.

Thomas Szasz served for most of his career as professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University.

Thomas Szasz was a staunch opponent of civil commitment and involuntary psychiatric treatment, but he believed in and practiced psychiatry and psychotherapy between consenting adults.

Thomas Szasz was born on April 15,1920, in Budapest, Hungary, the second son of Jewish parents Gyula and Lily Thomas Szasz.

Thomas Szasz completed his residency requirement at the Cincinnati General Hospital, then trained as a psychoanalyst at Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis from 1951 to 1956.

Thomas Szasz took a position as a professor at SUNY in 1956 and received tenure in 1962, taking 24 months out for duty as a practicing psychiatrist with the US Naval Reserve.

Thomas Szasz ended his own life on September 8,2012, after suffering a painful spinal-compression fracture from a recent fall.

Thomas Szasz had previously argued for the right to die in his writings.

Thomas Szasz was a strong critic of institutional psychiatry and was a prolific writer.

Thomas Szasz first presented his attack on "mental illness" as a legal term in 1958 in the Columbia Law Review.

Thomas Szasz was convinced there was a metaphorical character to mental disorders, and its uses in psychiatry were frequently injurious.

Thomas Szasz set himself a task to delegitimize legitimating agencies and authorities, and what he saw as their vast powers, enforced by psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, mental health laws, mental health courts, and mental health sentences.

Thomas Szasz was a critic of the influence of modern medicine on society, which he considered to be the secularization of religion's hold on humankind.

Thomas Szasz called schizophrenia "the sacred symbol of psychiatry" because those so labeled have long provided and continue to provide justification for psychiatric theories, treatments, abuses, and reforms.

Thomas Szasz argued that psychiatry is a pseudoscience that parodies medicine by using medical-sounding words, and that supported by the state through various Mental Health Acts, it has become a modern secular state religion.

Thomas Szasz believed that if we accept that "mental illness" is a euphemism for behaviors that are disapproved of, then the state has no right to force psychiatric "treatment" on these individuals.

Thomas Szasz argued that all these categories of people were taken as scapegoats of the community in ritual ceremonies.

Thomas Szasz made efforts to abolish involuntary psychiatric hospitalization for over two decades, and in 1970 took a part in founding the American Association for the Abolition of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization.

Thomas Szasz believed that testimony about the mental competence of a defendant should not be admissible in trials.

Thomas Szasz argued that the insanity defense was a legal tactic invented to circumvent the punishments of the church, which at the time included confiscation of the property of those who committed suicide, often leaving widows and orphans destitute.

Thomas Szasz criticized the war on drugs, arguing that using drugs is in fact a victimless crime.

Thomas Szasz drew analogies between the persecution of the drug-using minority and the persecution of Jewish and homosexual minorities.

Thomas Szasz considered suicide and the right to die to be among the most fundamental rights, but he opposed state-sanctioned euthanasia.

Thomas Szasz served on CCHR's Board of Advisors as Founding Commissioner.

In 2011, Thomas Szasz published an essay in recognition of the 50th anniversary of The Myth of Mental Illness, which had been delivered as a plenary address at the 2010 International Congress of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Edinburgh.