Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences - Hardcover

Szasz, Thomas Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471847089 ISBN 13: 9780471847083

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc, 1987

Synopsis

The noted psychiatrist challenges established scientific and social definitions of insanity, redefining the concept in relation to bodily illness, social deviance, and the sick role

About this title

From the Back Cover:

In this book, Dr. Szasz challenges the way both science and society define insanity; in the process, he helps us better understand this often misunderstood condition.

From Library Journal:

Szasz is the well-known anti-psychiatric psychiatrist who first attacked the "myth of mental illness" 25 years ago. Several books since, including the present one, seem redundantly to echo his attack. Always a clear and accessible writer, the author has some trenchant criticisms of psychobiology, of a society perhaps too ready to excuse criminality as psychopathology, of a field filled with jargon (is "self-actualization" anything more than "living life to its fullest"?). Unfortunately, such refreshing insights are buried in the overall excess of a polemic dismissing virtually all inner mental life and conflict in favor of a vague, apparently concretistic viewpoint. The book is certainly acessible to the lay public but not much of an addition to the author's previous work. Paul Hymowitz, Psychiatry Dept., Cornell Medical Ctr., New York
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0471847089
• ISBN 13: 9780471847083
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 414