Szasz's ire is not reserved merely for those who persecute drug addicts or those with eating disorders. As a matter of fact, he goes even further, boldly drawing a link between the entire concept of mental health to the concept of witchcraft.

In The Myth of Mental Illness, claims that all invocations of "mental health" or "mental illness" are deeply flawed conceptually, and have the same epistemic status as witchcraft. In the Middle Ages, people believed that heresy was harmful to society, and that, for the benefit of the heretic, the Church was authorised to intervene and extract a recantation, which was needed to save the person's soul. Likewise, today, people believe that eccentricity and deviance are harmful to society, and that, for the benefit of the alienated, the State is authorised to intervene and "treat" the unwilling "patient" with drugs, brainwashing, and until quite recently, electroshock therapy and forced sterilization.

In The Manufacture of Madness, Szasz takes up this theme again, arguing further that, not only are the concepts involved ("witchcraft" and "insanity") fallacious in exactly the same ways, both were also invented to serve the exact same purpose, the latter arising as the former became impractical. This book is strongly directed against the APA and their party line. Traditional humanist rhetoric in the discipline of psychology, spearheaded by the American Psychology Association, states that doctors "discovered" that witches weren't really evil, but were "actually" insane. Szasz fiercely criticises this received opinion as propaganda -- he says that they locked up deviants back then, and we lock them up now, and it's for the exact same reasons: deviants make "normal" people feel afraid. After all, "mental illness" is considered sufficient grounds to suspend two of our most basic legal rights, due process and informed consent. Szasz's invective is clear; consider the opening lines of The Manufacture of Madness:

In the past, most people believed in sorcery, sympathetic magic, and witchcraft. Men have a powerful need to perceive the causes of natural disasters, epidemics, personal misfortunes, and death. Magic and witchcraft supply a primitive theory for explaining such occurrences, and appropriate methods for coping with them.

The behavior of persons whose conduct differs from that of their fellows -- either by falling below the standards of the group or by surpassing them -- constitutes a similar mystery and threat; the notions of demonic possession and madness supply a primitive theory for explaining such occurrences and appropriate methods for coping with them. (3)

Although the perceptions which motivate Thomas Szasz are similar to those which motivated Foucault to write his first book Madness and Civilization, Szasz's writing style relies on a number of forms Foucault was reluctant to use. Foucault prefered to show the story and let the consequences speak for themselves, thereby insinuating his position. In the early phase of his career in which he wrote Madness and Civilization, he also prefered not to talk about emotions like "pride" or "fear" that would help put the incarceratory practices into perspective. As a result, Foucault's work is ambiguous and difficult to make heads or tails of. Szasz, however, makes clear his disdain for this social cowardice; he describes it as "immoral," a word that Foucault (like myself) prefers to avoid -- but the sentiment is clearly the same. On this matter, Szasz is definitely the better scholar and the better writer.

The flipside of this better writing style is that the "Establishment," while content to let the baroque writings of Foucault slide under their radar, have a special place in Hell reserved for Szasz. In a footnote early in The Manufacture of Madness, Szasz quotes his colleague Frederick G. Glaser: "The question will inevitably be raised whether sanctions of some form ought to be taken against Dr. Szasz, not only because of the content of his views but because of the manner in which he presents them. He has not chosen to limit his discussion to professional circles, as his magazine article, not the first that he has written, testifies." ("The dichotomy game: A further consideraiton of the writings of Dr. Thomas Szasz," American Journal of Psychiatry, 121, May 1965; p1073 -- quoted in Szasz, 19) The article to which Dr Glaser refers was published in Harper's.

Glaser's comments, which practically reek with Inquisitorial undertones of censorship and persecution, reflect the discomfort which Szasz inspires in psychiatrists whose job it is to find "sick" people and "help" them -- whether the "patient" wants that help or not. He wants to force people to recognise the hypocricy of their notions of "normal" and "abnormal."

In the Middle Ages, the Church endorsed a belief in witchcraft. To deny the existence of witches, therefore, was a form of heresy and therefore a sign of witchcraft. Unfortunately, today I have discovered that in our modern age, to deny the existence of mental illness is taken as a sign of madness, deserving censorship and "disagreement" of the paternalistic sort.

Let this serve as a lesson for us.