Thomas Szasz and the antipsychiatry of neoliberalism

http://libcom.org/blog/thomas-szasz-antipsychiatry-neoliberalism-22102013

A short critical introduction to the work of grandfather of psychiatry Thomas Szasz.

American psychiatrist and academic Szasz is probably best known for his controversial claim that mental illness doesn't exist, summed up in the title of his best-selling book The myth of mental illness (1974). Despite being known as a psychiatric abolitionist and the grandfather of anti-psychiatry, Szasz scorned that movement as an alternative to psychiatry that didn't go far enough (reserving special scorn for RD Laing). Here I will provide a short critical introduction to his work on mental illness and psychiatry from an anarcho-communist perspective.