ENGLISH

Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

By Thomas Stephen Szasz

Book information

Publisher
John Wiley & Sons
Year
1994
ISBN
047101012X, 9780471010128
LCC
RC451.4.S62 S93 1994
Open Library ID
OL1421413M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
12 MB (12090814 bytes)
Edition
1
Pages
272\272
Time added
2011-06-04 13:46:07

Description

This study examines ways in which psychiatry is used to control, segregate, and "treat" society's unwanted: adult dependents, the homeless, and those labelled mentally ill. Just as society once put the indigent in the poorhouse and workhouse, housed epileptics in state institutions, and imprisoned defaulting debtors, today coercive psychiatric practices are used to dispose of "undesirable" persons. But such coercion, the author contends, is counterproductive, injurious to the individual's dignity and liberty, and morally wrong. He argues that society must reject the infantilization of mental patients, and accord them the same rights and freedoms due those with bodily illness or no illness at all.

Similar books