Heresies

Heresies. Thomas Szasz, Author’s Foreword to the Greek Edition. Translation: Amaryllis – Aphrodite Tsegkou. Athens: Alternative Editions.

From the back cover:

Doctors control diseases, not people; psychiatrists control people, not diseases.

The goal of physical theory is to increase our understanding of the world; the goal of psychological theory is to increase the psychologist’s self-confidence.

The fundamental error of psychiatry is that it considers life as a problem to be solved, instead of as a goal to be fulfilled. Psychoanalysis is a new version of Judaism. The Orthodox Jew believes that the Jews are the Wealthy People, superior to all others. The Orthodox Psychoanalyst and the Psychoanalyst believe that the analysts and the analysands are the Healthy People, superior to all others.

Marx and Freud: the two great Jewish anti-Semites. Marx, the communist, promoted the dictatorship of the proletariat; Freud, the psychoanalyst, promoted psychiatric imperialism. Each, in his own way, proclaimed and put into practice intolerance.

Genius consists in being able to see with the eyes of a child and to think and write about what he sees with the mind and skill of an adult.

The opposite of genius is the bureaucrat, who sees with the eyes of an adult, thinks with the mind of a child and writes with the style of a dead man.

Cultured people discuss. The uncultured quarrel and, because they are incapable of discussion, confuse argumentation with quarreling.

When a doctor gives someone a prescription to take “dangerous drugs,” this is called “pharmacotherapy.” When a person administers them to himself, he is called a “substance user.”