Thomas Szasz
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.Collection: Religion
The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.Collection: Forgiveness
If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.Collection: God
Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.Collection: Good
Narcissist: 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.Collection: Learning
Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.Collection: Courage
Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.Collection: Society
Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.Collection: Learning
A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.Collection: Teacher
Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.Collection: Happiness
In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.
Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.
People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.
A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.
The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.
Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions.
There is no such thing as mental illness, hence also no such thing as psychotherapy.
It is easier to do one's duty to others than to one's self. If you do your duty to others, you are considered reliable. If you do your duty to yourself, you are considered selfish.
Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.
When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic.
He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself.
In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients.
Mental illness, of course, is not literally a 'thing' - or physical object - and hence it can 'exist' only in the same sort of way in which other theoretical concepts exist.
There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography.
Permissiveness is the principle of treating children as if they were adults; and the tactic of making sure they never reach that stage.
The system isn't stupid, but the people in it are.
'Psychotherapy' is a private, confidential conversation that has nothing to do with illness, medicine, or healing.
No further evidence is needed to show that 'mental illness' is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to be elucidated, but is the name of a concept whose purpose is to obscure the obvious.
Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum.
Individual psychotherapy - that is, engaging a distressed fellow human in a disciplined conversation and human relationship - requires that the therapist have the proper temperament and philosophy of life for such work. By that I mean that the therapist must be patient, modest, and a perceptive listener, rather than a talker and advice-giver.
In the United States today, there is a pervasive tendency to treat children as adults, and adults as children. The options of children are thus steadily expanded, while those of adults are progressively constricted. The result is unruly children and childish adults.Collection: Children
'Statistics' show that 66% of clients are cured with psychotherapy; what statistics don't show is that 72% are cured without it.Collection: Investing
Mental illness is a myth, whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations.Collection: Pills
The less a person knows about the workings of the social institutions in his society, the more he must trust those who wield power in it; and the more he trusts those who wield such power, the more vulnerable he makes himself to becoming their victim.Collection: Becoming
Self-respect is to the soul as oxygen is to the body. Deprive a person of oxygen, and you kill his body; deprive him of self-respect and you kill his spirit.Collection: Self Esteem
We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibilityCollection: Meaningful
Marriages are said to be made in Heaven, which may be why they don't work here on Earth.Collection: Marriage
Psychiatry is probably the single most destructive force that has affected American Society within the last fifty years.Collection: Years
The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity.Collection: Religious
Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment.Collection: Children
Knowledge is gained by learning; trust by doubt; skill by practice; and love by love.Collection: Love
The battle for the world is the battle for definitions.Collection: Battle
For Jews, the Messiah has never come; for Christians, He has come but once; for modern man, He appears and disappears with increasing rapidity. The saviors of modern man, the "scientists" who promise salvation through the "discoveries" of ethology and sociology, psychology and psychiatry, and all the other bogus religions, issue forth periodically, as if selected by some Messiah-of-the-Month Club.Collection: Christian
The FDA calls certain substances "controlled." But there are no "controlled substances," there are only controlled citizens.Collection: Fda
Aided and abetted by corrupt analysts, patients who have nothing better to do with their lives often use the psychoanalytic situation to transform insignificant childhood hurts into private shrines at which they worship unceasingly the enormity of the offenses committed against them. This solution is immensely flattering to the patients -- as are all forms of unmerited self-aggrandizement; it is immensely profitable for the analysts -- as are all forms pandering to people's vanity; and it is often immensely unpleasant for nearly everyone else in the patient's life.Collection: Hurt
What people really need and demand from life is not wealth, comfort, or esteem, but games worth playingCollection: Games
Had the white settlers in North America called the natives 'Americans' instead of 'Indians', the early Americans could not have said that the 'only good Indian is a dead Indian' and could not have deprived them so easily of their lands and lands and lives. Robbing people of their proper names is often the first step in robbing them of their property, liberty, and life.Collection: Land
All drugs of any interest to any moderately intelligent person in America are now illegal.Collection: Humor
The Greeks distinguished between good and bad behavior, language that enhanced or diminished persons. Being intoxicated with scientism, we fail to recognize that the seemingly technical terms used to identify psychiatric illnesses and interventions are simply dyphemisms and euphemisms.Collection: Greek