'Psychotherapy' is a private, confidential conversation that has nothing to do with illness, medicine, or healing. — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
Mental illness is a myth, whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
There is no such thing as mental illness, hence also no such thing as psychotherapy. — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
So long as men denounce each other as mentally sick (homosexual, addicted, insane, and so forth) so that the madman can always… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
No further evidence is needed to show that 'mental illness' is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
By pretending that convention is Nature, that disobeying a personal prohibition is a medical illness, they establish themselves as agents of social… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
The Greeks distinguished between good and bad behavior, language that enhanced or diminished persons. Being intoxicated with scientism, we fail to recognize… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
Mental illness, of course, is not literally a 'thing' - or physical object - and hence it can 'exist' only in the… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
Is psychiatry a medical enterprise concerned with treating diseases, or a humanistic enterprise concerned with helping persons with their personal problems? Psychiatry… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
We shall therefore compare the concept of homosexuality as heresy, prevalent in the days of the witch-hunts, with the concept of homosexuality… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
We achieve active mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick… — Thomas Szasz Copy Share Image
The disease concept of homosexuality as with the disease concept of all so-called mental illnesses, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, or suicide… — 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
