Mental Illness Thomas Szasz Summary

1. Introduction “Now he is seen as the greatest originator of all, the agent of the Zeitgeist who accomplished the invasion of psychology by the principle of the unconscious process […] It is not likely that the history of psychology can be written in the next three centuries without mention of Freud’s name and still claim to be a general history of psychology. And there you have the best criterion of greatness: posthumous fame” (Boring, 1950, pp. 743,707). Sigmund Freud is considered widely as one of the most influential thinkers of the 21st century.

In the chapter “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” David Rosenhan decided to experiment how well psychiatrists were able to differentiate a “sane” individual versus an “insane” individual. Rosenhan recruited eight other individuals, and together the eight of them faked their way into various hospitals. Mental illness can easily be misdiagnosed or mistreated in an individual when psychiatrists do not take the time to fully identify the patients illness because, most often people who consider themselves “insane” are actually the “sane” ones, while the people who consider themselves to be “sane” are actually “insane.” In the book Opening Skinners Box, Lauren Slater writes about David Rosenhan a psychologist with a joint degree in law who decided to try something out after “He had observed how many men used mental illness as a way of avoiding the draft.” (p.64) Rosenhan recruited eight other individuals and

Humanity commonly associates any man, women, or child into different categorizes of its form of conformity where individuals differing from the social norm are often placed under the category of a mental illness. Consequently, society categorizes human beings with different mental comprehensive knowledges under different medical forms of mental illnesses. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the author, Edgar Allen Poe, presents a narrator that is quite unique from the social norm that makes one wonder what is the possible logical reasoning behind his abnormal behavior. Subsequently, we, as human beings, commonly choose to follow the most logical explanation to believe that the narrator has a mental illness due to his actions and thoughts in the story.

Criticism arose towards drawbacks such as noted side effects, abusive medical and physical treatments, and uneven application of electroshock therapy (Blowig, 2011). The controversial point is that, should we treat mentally ill patients, at the cost of crude and abusive treatment? The problem becomes even more complicated under the circumstance that patients might not have full information of the side effects, and it’s possible that they are forced to receive such treatments without any other

Carl Hart is a professor at Columbia University whose focus is on drug addiction. He has a very original view point when it comes to addictions, because he grew up in a community plagued by substance use problems, had used and sold drugs in the past, as well as now being a scientist which allows him to understand a whole other side of substance use. In Hart’s talk he is trying to disband the belief that most people who are involved in substance use will abuse those substances; he shares the statistic that 80-90% of drug users are not addicts, but rather they are individuals that the public would see as contributing members of our society and would never assume that they take part in substance use (3:40-4:15). As he goes on to explain

A mental disorder refers to the disruption of one's feelings or thinking as a result of dysfunctional of part of the brain. Besides being misunderstood and misdiagnosed many in the society fears mental illnesses. The only solution to this kind of fear is a result of creating awareness about the condition and ensuring best clinical practice is followed at all times. Best clinical practice and intervention measures in neurology are aimed at mitigating the adverse effects associated with mental illnesses such as language deterioration, loss of vision, loss of agility, loss of speech, and other adverse effects. Mental disorders display numerous symptoms that can sometimes be difficult to identify in a patient.

Insanity can develop as a result of abnormal thinking which can be treated effectively by changing the thinking process. Rosenhan’s article says all normal are not detectably sane and the patients were not disruptive in their behaviour to consider them as insane. “The consequences to patients hospitalized in such an environment – the powerlessness, depersonalization, segregation, mortification, and self-labelling – seem undoubtedly counter-therapeutic”(p 258). These point to the fact that insanity may be attributed to one or more or all of the components of psychological model of

But in case of mental illnesses, in majority of the cases, the doctor relies on a set of symptoms that point towards a particular illness and then bases his/her diagnosis based on a standard set of protocols prepared in this regard. These standards or protocols are based on past experiences with numerous case studies and accordingly treatment procedures are developed. But considering that every individual comes from a specific culture and every culture dictates certain behaviour, sets certain rules, approves a certain way of thinking, it is only natural that the manifestation of abnormal behaviour would also be different in different cultures. Moreover, what is considered normal or abnormal differs vastly from culture to culture. Hence what may be considered a serious mental disorder in one culture may be considered a normal thing in a different culture.

As time went on, Narcissism became more about over exaggerating, and believing that you're special and entitled to anything you please. This definition configured by the American Psychiatric association developed the idea that Narcissism isn't good or bad, but instead a disability. The rest of the article tells about different views on narcissism from two different books that Acocella gives her opinion on. The first book that Acocella analyses, (for the majority of the paper) is Vanderbilt University history professor, Elizabeth Lundbeck's The Americanization of Narcissism, which Acocella is not very fond of. The second book, which Acocella takes a better liking to is Princeton's Simon Blackburn's Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love.

The rise of the scientific method and psychiatry has led to a more practical and rational approach to mental illness. The mentally ill are no longer considered to be those who are afflicted by demons or being punished by a higher power. Treatments include medication and psychoanalytic approaches instead of seclusion, exorcisms and torture. However, there are instances where the mad are identified from the sane through superstitious and religious elements like being possessed. This is evident in the occasional cases, in which individuals who display symptoms of schizophrenia and other Contemporary psychiatric conditions are believed to be possessed.