you will note, m, the qualifiers: a few decades ago and considered. he was taken in by lefties and used for left political purposes and causes, just as anyone uses bourgeois social science to further leftist sentiments. radical meant radical departure from the dominant predispositions in psych at the time. "what is left" is a relative term eh? oh no! not so! we have the pope and his bishops on the list to tell what is left! this list, a left list, contains the very same hodge podge collection of political orientations as you mention. what can we make of this????
libertarian lefties, get off this list since you can't be leftists. join the anarchists in the anteroom and pull up a chair and maybe the pope or one of the bishops will hand you keys to the glory land.
if'n you're lucky!
kelley i heart /dev/null
> > Kelley wrote:
> > >and, btw, arguments like that of szaz's were considered *very*
> > >radical and *very* left a few decades ago. szaz's work, for ex, was
> > >one of the factors behind changing the classification of
> > >homosexuality as a psychiatric illness.
> >
> > If Thomas Szasz is a "radical," he is a radical _libertarian_. (And
> > as a libertarian, he may very well support sexual freedom of
> > consenting adults, just as Hayek, for instance, supported such
> > freedom.) Was Szasz ever considered to be a "leftist" &, if so, by
> > whom?
> > Yoshie
>
>Interesting mention of Hayek given that TS is big fan who has cited FH as
>important influence. Szasz's radical challenge to conventional psychiatry
>has never been leftist although it resonated with certain "liberatory" and
>anti-institutional aspects of 60s/70s ("Hey man, I'm doin' my own thing!).
>Counterculture and new left were too often conflated into "The Movement."
>
>So-called "anti-psychiatry movement" exemplified, in many ways, political
>hodge-podge of the period. Big three guys - TS, R.D. Laing, David Cooper
>were lumped together because, "collectively", they viewed conventional
>psychiatry as oppressive (each cited influence of Foucault's _Madness &
>Civilization_ at some time or another so I guess they have that in common
>as well). But Szasz was always a libertarian, Laing was into psychedelics
>& altering consciousness, Cooper identified himself as marxist (who held
>that family, which lays at heart of system of repression because it
>enforces conformity upon and demands obedience from children, must be
>abolished). Michael Hoover