The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct is a controversial book by Thomas Szasz. It is highly influential in the anti-psychiatry movement. In it, Szasz argues that mental illness is a social construct created by doctors, and the term can only be used as a metaphor given that an illness must be an objectively demonstrable biological pathology, whereas psychiatric disorders meet none of these criteria. What psychiatrists label mental illness is in fact a deviation from the consensus reality or common morality, Szasz says. This is a list of controversial non-fiction books aimed at the general reader which discuss controversial issues, or are (or were at the time of writing) controversial for other reasons. ... Photography by Jeffrey A. Schaler. ... Beginning in the 1960s, a movement called anti-psychiatry claimed that psychiatric patients are not ill but are individuals that do not share the same consensus reality as most people in society. ... The Scream, the famous painting commonly thought of as depicting the experience of mental illness. ... Social scientists and literary scholars have claimed that many things are social constructions or social constructs, or that they have been socially constructed. ... Psychiatry is a branch of medicine that studies and treats mental and emotional disorders (see mental illness). ... The term Consensus reality has two usages. ...
The book extends the arguments of Szasz's paper The Myth of Mental Illness, first published in 1960. In it, Szasz argues that beliefs cannot be caused by brain disease, although such artifacts as visual (or hearing) defects can. Visual artifacts that cause people to see things that cannot be seen by other people is known by psychiatrists at schizophrenia. 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ...
External links
Text of the original paper The Myth of Mental Illness
Since the notion of mentalillness is extremely widely used nowadays, inquiry into the ways in which this term is employed would seem to be especially indicated.
The notion of mentalillness derives it main sup- port from such phenomena as syphilis of the brain or delirious conditions-intoxications, for instance -- in which persons are known to manifest various peculiarities or disorders of thinking and behavior.
It is to suggest that the phenomena now called mentalillnesses be looked at afresh and more simple, that they be removed from the category of illness, and that they be regarded as the expressions of man's struggle with the problem of how he should live.
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