Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
Permissiveness is the principle of treating children as if they were adults; and the tactic of making sure they never reach that… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment. — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
Child psychology and child psychiatry cannot be reformed. They must be abolished. — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
Like fast-food chains, child psychiatric inpatient units and the wholesale psychiatric drugging of children, in and out of hospitals, are recent...and remarkably… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
Competence in heterosexuality, or at least the appearance or pretense of such competence, is as much a public affair as a privateone.… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
Aided and abetted by corrupt analysts, patients who have nothing better to do with their lives often use the psychoanalytic situation to… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
Why do children want to grow up? Because they experience their lives as constrained by immaturity and perceive adulthood as a condition… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
Institutional psychiatry is a continuation of the Inquisition. All that has really changed is the vocabulary and the social style. The vocabulary conforms to… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share
By pretending that convention is Nature, that disobeying a personal prohibition is a medical illness, they establish themselves as agents of social control and… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share
We shall therefore compare the concept of homosexuality as heresy, prevalent in the days of the witch-hunts, with the concept of homosexuality as mental… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share
The basic ingredients of psychotherapy are religion, rhetoric, and repression, which are themselves mutually overlapping categories. — Thomas Szasz Copy Share
For Jews, the Messiah has never come; for Christians, He has come but once; for modern man, He appears and disappears with increasing rapidity.… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share
I submit that the traditional definition of psychiatry, which is still vogue, places it alongside such things as alchemy and astrology, and commits it… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share
I believe the time has come to acknowledge that the practice of routine circumcision rests on the absurd premise that the only mammal in… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share
He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself. — Thomas Szasz Copy Share
The passion to interpret as madness that with which we disagree seems to have infected the best of contemporary minds. — Thomas Szasz Copy Share
We should pledge ourselves to the proposition that the irresponsible life is not worth living. — Thomas Szasz Copy Share
A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong. — Thomas Szasz Copy Share
We have, in our day, witnessed the birth of the Therapeutic State. This is perhaps the major implication of psychiatry as an institution of… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share
The homosexual is a scapegoat who evokes no sympathy. Hence, he can only be a victim, never a martyr. — Thomas Szasz Copy Share
People dream of making the virtuous powerful, so they can depend upon them. Since they cannot do that, people choose to make the powerful… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share
The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic - in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea -… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share
