Thomas Szasz Name and picture from twetch — not on-chain. The signature is; the profile is not.

If a person does something dramatically bad—we immediately assume that he might be mentally ill...If a person does something dramatically good—we make no similar assumption... “mental illness” is a concept whose purpose is to obscure the obvious.

Crime is illegal behavior. Mental illness is illegitimate behavior...It is not surprising that crime is increasingly viewed as mental illness, and that psychiatric sanctions increasingly replace criminal penalties.

If you cut off your penis, psychiatrists say you have a mental illness and lock you up... But if psychiatrists say you have transsexualism and you give consent to a surgeon to cut off your penis, then you are receiving treatment for an illness.

Some parents want their children to have it better; others want them to do better. The former are likely to have incompetent and unhappy children, the latter, competent and happy ones.

It's strawmen all the way down

Poor life choices ≠ mental illness.

A person is said to get a cold, come down with the flu, develop cancer; but he goes mad. The verb “goes” indicates that madness is a doing, not a happening.

There is no mental illness. There is a diversity of human behaviors, some socially approved, others socially disapproved. In modern societies, many people prefer to view some disapproved behaviors as diseases and call them “mental illnesses.”

Treating addiction to heroin with methadone is like treating addiction to scotch with bourbon.

A drug cannot expand consciousness. The only thing a drug can expand is the earnings of the company that makes it.

The psychiatric prohibition of suicide—like the psychiatric prohibition of self-abuse (masturbation) and drug abuse (self-medication)—is emblematic of the culture’s hostility to autonomy and of the psychiatrist’s social function as agent of social control.

This is my first Twetch! Excited to be here 🔥