[lbo-talk] Thomas Szasz, R.I.P.

[andie_nachgeborenen]

Why unfortunately? And why try to hedge? If Szaz had been more moderate and cautious, he would not have attracted the attention he did to anti-psychiatry. We need scholarly bomb-throwers like him to make space for temperamentally more nuanced people to have space to work. Being interestingly wrong is a real gift, much more valuable than being boringly right, especially if the "right" is hedging rather than actual advance. I speak as one if those nuanced gleaners who followers in the wake of the gates run over and territory carved out by reckless visionaries. Most people don't get nuance anyway, they want it all in simple shapes and primary colors. 

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 12, 2012, at 11:51 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:


> [WS:]  Szasz was my hero in my college years and an authority I quoted
> in my discussions with my ex-girlfriend, herself a psychology major.
> But unfortunately his views were later undermined by the progress made
> by science.  His views on schizophrenia - which I took for granted in
> college - proved to be wrong.
> 
> His main contribution was his strong opposition to quackery in
> psychology, but then not the whole psychology is quackery.  In the
> hindsight, he should have been more careful in drawing a distinction
> between the two.  In a way, his criticism of psychology resembles
> Graeber's criticism of economics - bot focus on quackery as if it were
> the whole discipline.
> 
> So the lesson to be learned is to hedge criticism against possible
> advances in actual science.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Wojtek
> 
> "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
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