As I recall, Szaszs himself came to regret that his ideas were used to promote the deinstitutionalization of mental patients. While he always felt that it was wrong to institutionalize people against their will, to deinstutionalize patients who had been hospitalized for years, if not decades, was not necessarily doing them any favors.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant http://www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math
---------- Original Message ---------- From: Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Thomas Szasz, R.I.P. Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2012 11:52:18 -0400
Miles: " In any case, this has no bearing on Szasz's central argument that the labelling and treatment of psychological disorders is primarily a mechanism for social control."
[WS:] I think we are in agreement and quibble only over semantics. The social control thing is really the crux of the matter here.
Having said, however, making such an argument in the neo-liberal US of A is double edged-sword. It often does not lead to a greater empowerment of individuals but to cuts in social safety nets in the name of "freedom" as it has been the case of mental health care.
I would be 100% behind arguments for less social control in a socialist society that provides adequate services to anyone who needs them, but not in the US. Ditto for school "reform" and any other "reform" the corporate media talk about. My basic instinct is to distrust anything unless it is vehemently denied by the US officialdom or alternatively it puts the US neoliberal system in a negative light.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money." ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
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