After generations of living under medical tutelage, which provides us with protection (albeit illusory) against "dangerous drugs", we have failed to cultivate the self-reliance and self-discipline we must possess as competent adults surrounded by the fruits of our pharmacological-technological age.
Thomas SzaszNarcissist: psychoanalytic term for the person who loves himself more than his analyst; considered to be the manifestation of a dire mental disease whose successful treatment depends on the patient learning to love the analyst more and himself less.
Thomas SzaszThe language of scienceโand especially of a science of manโis, necessarily, anti-individualistic, and hence a threat to human freedom and dignity.
Thomas SzaszThe basic ingredients of psychotherapy are religion, rhetoric, and repression, which are themselves mutually overlapping categories.
Thomas SzaszThe two greatest enemies of the individual in the modern world are communism and psychiatry. Each wages a relentless war against that which makes a person an individual: communism against the ownership of property, psychiatry against the ownership of the self (mind and body). Communists criminalize the autonomous use of capital and labor, and harshly punish those who "traffic" in the black market, especially in foreign currencies. Psychiatrists criminalize the autonomous use of the self, and harshly punish those who "traffic" in self-abuse, especially in self-medication and self-destruction.
Thomas Szasz