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[JamesBond007]

Originally called mad-doctoring, psychiatry began in the seventeenth century with the establishing of madhouses and the legal empowering of doctors to incarcerate persons denominated as insane. Until the end of the nineteenth century, every relationship between psychiatrist and patient was based on domination and coercion, as between master and slave. Psychiatry, its emblem the state mental hospital, was a part of the public sphere, the sphere of coercion.

The advent of private psychotherapy, at the end of the nineteenth century, split psychiatry in two: some patients continued to be the involuntary inmates of state hospitals; others became the voluntary patients of privately practicing psychotherapists. Psychotherapy was officially defined as a type of medical treatment, but actually was a secular-medical version of the cure of souls. Relationships between therapist and patient, Thomas Szasz argues, was based on cooperation and contract, as is relationships between employer and employee, or, between clergyman and parishioner. Psychotherapy, its emblem the therapist's office, was a part of the private sphere, the contract.

Through most of the twentieth century, psychiatry was a house divided-half-slave, and half-free. During the past few decades, psychiatry became united again: all relations between psychiatrists and patients, regardless of the nature of the interaction between them, are now based on actual or potential coercion. This situation is the result of two major "reforms" that deprive therapist and patient alike of the freedom to contract with one another: Therapists now have a double duty: they must protect all mental patients-involuntary and voluntary, hospitalized or outpatient, incompetent or competent-from themselves. They must also protect the public from all patients.

Persons designated as mental patients may be exempted from responsibility for the deleterious consequences of their own behavior if it is attributed to mental illness. The radical differences between the coercive character of mental hospital practices in the public sphere, and the consensual character of psychotherapeutic practices in the private sphere, are thus destroyed. At the same time, as the scope of psychiatric coercion expands from the mental hospital to the psychiatrist's office, its reach extends into every part of society, from early childhood to old age.

Editorial Reviews
Review

"The book is readable and challenging; readers will never see psychiatry in the same way again."

—Choice

"Szasz now appears to have been transformed into an ally rather than an enemy of the National Health Service general adult psychiatrist. Szasz's project has always been to argue passionately for a boundry of demarcation around the responsibility and power of psychiatry....But what saves this book from being just another mugging of psychiatry is that Szasz does raise a fundamental question at the core of our discipline. If we restricted our attention only to those clients who wanted to see a psychiatrist, and disengaged from all those who really didn't, how different might our professional practice and experience be?"

—The British Journal of Psychiatry

“In Liberation by Oppression . . . his latest thrust at the therapeutic state and psychiatric mendacity, Szasz leaves no doubt as to the legitimacy and credibility of his arguments. Masquerading as therapy and working under the name of medicine, present-day psychiatry subjects its patients (victims) to the most heinous forms of mental and physical oppression. Comparing psychiatry to slavery may seem extreme at first glance, but as Szasz expands his argument, we find his reasoning profound and convincing. Because the state proclaims that psychiatry is a branch of medicine and that all mental diseases are brain diseases, psychiatry takes ever-greater control of people and their behaviors. With the power forcibly to drug, restrain, and imprison, it occupies the throne of the therapeutic state. Despite all of its self-proclaimed efforts to “free” persons from their “illnesses,” it actually oppresses and confines them. Therapeutic enslavement by psychiatry is worse than all the forms of political slavery the world has endured thus far. . . . Liberation by Oppression is a valiant and worthy effort by one of the great modern thinkers to keep the flame of liberty burning. It is a bold, powerful, and intellectually spirited debunking of the psychiatric pseudoscience that debases the human spirit and damages countless lives. Szasz’s message urgently needs to reach both those who value science and those who share the values of the Declaration of Independence. It is a masterful defense of both reason and individual rights.”

—Robert A. Baker, Independent Review

"Thomas Szasz has created an extraordinary body of work, that continues to raise consequential challenges to the the prevailing myths of the culture of psychology."

—Tobias Wolff, PEN/Faulkner Award-winner, Stanford University

https://www.amazon.com/Liberation-Op...6052678&sr=8-2

[Skjaldemjøden]

Fortællinger af Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1873)

[PHDNM]

Jean Ray - Malpertuis





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malpertuis

[gixajo]

Pure scapism. (or not)

[MMurt7]

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.

[PHDNM]

Living White brings together Robert S. Griffin's writing on race during the 2000-2005 period. Included are excerpts from his two books published during this time, The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds: An Up-Close Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce and One Sheaf, One Vine: Racially Conscious White Americans Talk About Race. Also here, in total or in large part, are eleven published articles, one unpublished article, and a speech. In addition, there is a published article about Professor Griffin, and a published interview in which he was the subject. Last, there are excerpts from two earlier books of his that relate to the story he is telling in this book. The writings are ordered chronologically for the most part and the author provides commentaries to accompany them. This gives Living White a narrative line and lends an autobiographical quality to it. In large measure, Living White is Dr. Griffin's own story over these past few years as it relates to race. Living White is about white people, and it is for white people. Its focus is on the personal, in contrast to the public, dimensions of the racial challenges that whites confront at this time in their history. This book isn't an analysis of race in America or elsewhere. It isn't about public policy or politics or organizational activity. It isn't about how the outside world is doing but how individual white people are doing. This book will support readers in living more honorable lives as white men and women.

[JamesBond007]

According to The New York Times, Noam Chomsky is “arguably the most important intellectual alive.” But he isn’t easy to read . . . or at least he wasn’t until these books came along. Made up of intensively edited speeches and interviews, they offer something not found anywhere else: pure Chomsky, with every dazzling idea and penetrating insight intact, delivered in clear, accessible, reader-friendly prose.

Published as four short books in the famous Real Story series—What Uncle Sam Really Wants; The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many; Secrets, Lies and Democracy; and The Common Good—they’ve collectively sold almost 600,000 copies.

And they continue to sell year after year after year because Chomsky’s ideas become, if anything, more relevant as time goes by. For example, twenty years ago he pointed out that “in 1970, about 90% of international capital was used for trade and long-term investment—more or less productive things—and 10% for speculation. By 1990, those figures had reversed.” As we know, speculation continued to increase exponentially. We’re paying the price now for not heeding him them.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...he-world-works

[JamesBond007]

According to The New York Times, Noam Chomsky is “arguably the most important intellectual alive.” But he isn’t easy to read . . . or at least he wasn’t until these books came along. Made up of intensively edited speeches and interviews, they offer something not found anywhere else: pure Chomsky, with every dazzling idea and penetrating insight intact, delivered in clear, accessible, reader-friendly prose.

Published as four short books in the famous Real Story series—What Uncle Sam Really Wants; The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many; Secrets, Lies and Democracy; and The Common Good—they’ve collectively sold almost 600,000 copies.

And they continue to sell year after year after year because Chomsky’s ideas become, if anything, more relevant as time goes by. For example, twenty years ago he pointed out that “in 1970, about 90% of international capital was used for trade and long-term investment—more or less productive things—and 10% for speculation. By 1990, those figures had reversed.” As we know, speculation continued to increase exponentially. We’re paying the price now for not heeding him them.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...he-world-works

^ I stopped reading this book -- I don't like it as it is basically Chomsky dumbed down for the masses -- modified texts from interviews he has given.

[JamesBond007]

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

In his first major book on the subject of income inequality, Noam Chomsky skewers the fundamental tenets of neoliberalism and casts a clear, cold, patient eye on the economic facts of life. What are the ten principles of concentration of wealth and power at work in America today? They're simple enough: reduce democracy, shape ideology, redesign the economy, shift the burden onto the poor and middle classes, attack the solidarity of the people, let special interests run the regulators, engineer election results, use fear and the power of the state to keep the rabble in line, manufacture consent, marginalize the population. In Requiem for the American Dream, Chomsky devotes a chapter to each of these ten principles, and adds readings from some of the core texts that have influenced his thinking to bolster his argument.

To create Requiem for the American Dream, Chomsky and his editors, the filmmakers Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks, and Jared P. Scott, spent countless hours together over the course of five years, from 2011 to 2016. After the release of the film version, Chomsky and the editors returned to the many hours of tape and transcript and created a document that included three times as much text as was used in the film. The book that has resulted is nonetheless arguably the most succinct and tightly woven of Chomsky's long career, a beautiful vessel--including old-fashioned ligatures in the typeface--in which to carry Chomsky's bold and uncompromising vision, his perspective on the economic reality and its impact on our political and moral well-being as a nation.

"During the Great Depression, which I'm old enough to remember, it was bad–much worse subjectively than today. But there was a sense that we'll get out of this somehow, an expectation that things were going to get better . . ." —from Requiem for the American Dream

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...american-dream

[Turkophagos]