Thomas Szasz has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 3 ratings. The most-rated is The Myth of Psychotherapy.
The Myth of Psychotherapy
Summary
Until recent years, “bad” and “immoral” were the terms used to describe people who are now referred to as “sick” and “in need of treatment.” Moral and religious perspective has been replaced by medical and therapeutic rhetoric. It is little wonder why the world is plagued by legions of rapists, drug users, murderers, thieves, and child abusers, all of whom are now referred to as having one form or another of “addiction” and are thus either “sick” or suffering from “mental illness.” Accordingly, modern psychotherapists claim that these are in need of specialized “therapy” or “treatment” to help them “cope with their disease.” Moral relativism, bolstered by psychotherapy, has prevailed over the traditional ideas of self-control, individual responsibility, and moral culpability. Thomas Szasz moves to demythologize psychotherapy itself in a most provocative manner.
©1988 Thomas Szasz (P)1992 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Psychiatry
Summary
For more than half a century, Thomas Szasz has devoted much of his career to a radical critique of psychiatry. His latest work, Psychiatry: The Science of Lies, is a culmination of his life’s work: to portray the integral role of deception in the history and practice of psychiatry. Szasz argues that the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness stands in the same relationship to the diagnosis and treatment of bodily illness that the forgery of a painting does to the original masterpiece. Art historians and the legal system seek to distinguish forgeries from originals. Those concerned with medicine, on the other hand - physicians, patients, politicians, health-insurance providers, and legal professionals - take the opposite stance when faced with the challenge of distinguishing everyday problems in living from bodily diseases, systematically authenticating non-diseases as diseases. The boundary between disease and non-disease - genuine and imitation, truth and falsehood - thus becomes arbitrary and uncertain. There is neither glory nor profit in correctly demarcating what counts as medical illness and medical healing from what does not. Individuals and families wishing to protect themselves from medically and politically authenticated charlatanry are left to their own intellectual and moral resources to make critical decisions about human dilemmas miscategorized as “mental diseases” and about medicalized responses misidentified as “psychiatric treatments.” Delivering his sophisticated analysis in lucid prose and with a sharp wit, Szasz continues to engage and challenge readers of all backgrounds. Thomas Szasz is professor emeritus of psychiatry at the State University of New York’s Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York.
©2008 Thomas Szasz (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays
Summary
Defining "medicalization" as the perception of nonmedical conditions as medical problems and nondiseases as diseases, Thomas Szasz has devoted much of his career to exposing the dangers of "medicalizing" the conditions of some who simply refuse to conform to society's expectations. Szasz argues that modern psychiatry's tireless ambition to explain the human condition has led to the treatment of life's difficulties and oddities as clinical illnesses rather than as humanity revealed in its fullness. This collection of impassioned essays, published between 1973 and 2006, chronicles the author's long campaign against the orthodoxies of psychiatry. From "Medicine to Magic" to "Medicine as Social Control", the audiobook delves into the fascinating history of medicalization, including "The Discovery of Drug Addiction", "Persecutions for Witchcraft and Drugcraft", and "Food Abuse and Foodaholism". In a society that has little tolerance for those who live outside its rules, Dr. Szasz's writings are as relevant today as ever.
©2007 Thomas Szasz (P)2014 Redwood Audiobooks