Psychiatry is coercion masquerading as care

If you talk to God, you are praying;
If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.

At one period in my life, I was one decision and two years away from becoming a fully-fledged psychiatrist (or at least being a Junior House Officer working directly under the supervision of a University's Psychiatry Department).

Fortunately, I took the right decision and got the hell out of there.

Since then, one of the highlights of following the Austrian School has been my discovery of the work of the incredible Thomas S. Szasz, the Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. Check out this quote:

"Inasmuch as we have words to describe medicine as a healing art, but have none to describe it as a method of social control or political rule, we must first give it a name. I propose that we call it pharmacracy, from the Greek roots pharmakon, for ‘medicine' or ‘drug,' and kratein, for ‘to rule' or ‘to control.' ... As theocracy is rule by God or priests, and democracy is rule by the people or the majority, so pharmacracy is rule by medicine or physicians."

Szasz believes that there is no such thing as mental illness, and that the entire mental illness establishment is nothing more than an invention and plaything of the state to control societal dissenters and anyone else objecting too strenuously to the control of the state mafia over our lives. It's also a useful tool for relatives to take control of people, with the blessing of the monster state. In short, mental illness is unwanted behavior, not medical malady.

You'll notice that in "Soft-Totalitarian" states, such as 1970s Russia, it is usually the mental illness community who are happy to willingly act as tools to ensure state control, with refuseniks and other dissenters often ending up in psychiatric hospitals. We're seeing the same thing in Britain, of course, with anti-social behaviour orders and other moves towards compulsory mental control over individuals, starting naturally enough with yobs and violent bums, but no doubt ending with people who write heretical anti-government thoughts on blog web sites.

Anyhow, back to Szasz. It's a crazy spelling for a name, but he ain't no crazy guy. Check out his latest article on Lew Rockwell, and his website, the best part of which is his materials page.