Agents Quote by Thomas Szasz

“By pretending that convention is Nature, that disobeying a personal prohibition is a medical illness, they establish themselves as agents of social control and at the same time disguise their punitive interventions in the semantic and social trappings of medical practice.”

Thomas Szasz

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Agents Conventions Disguise Disobeying Illness Intervention Medical Nature Practice Pretending Prohibition Social Social control

More by Thomas Szasz

Institutional psychiatry is a continuation of the Inquisition. All that has really changed is the vocabulary and the social style. The vocabulary conforms to…

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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…

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The basic ingredients of psychotherapy are religion, rhetoric, and repression, which are themselves mutually overlapping categories.

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For Jews, the Messiah has never come; for Christians, He has come but once; for modern man, He appears and disappears with increasing rapidity.…

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I submit that the traditional definition of psychiatry, which is still vogue, places it alongside such things as alchemy and astrology, and commits it…

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I believe the time has come to acknowledge that the practice of routine circumcision rests on the absurd premise that the only mammal in…

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He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself.

Thomas Szasz

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The passion to interpret as madness that with which we disagree seems to have infected the best of contemporary minds.

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We should pledge ourselves to the proposition that the irresponsible life is not worth living.

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A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.

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We have, in our day, witnessed the birth of the Therapeutic State. This is perhaps the major implication of psychiatry as an institution of…

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The homosexual is a scapegoat who evokes no sympathy. Hence, he can only be a victim, never a martyr.

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Explore all 121 Thomas Szasz quotes

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