Neurotic Symptoms: A Refusal to Accept Trade-Offs

Psychoanalysis teaches, correctly enough, that neurotic symptoms are due to unresolved, unconscious conflict. However, it would be more accurate to say that neurotic symptoms are due to the fact that the subject (the so­ called “neurotic”) chooses indecisiveness in the face of conflict: confronted with the necessity of having to choose between two things both of which he wants but only one of which he can have, he refuses to choose, as if hoping that by waiting only a little longer he would be able to have both. In this sense, the neurotic is simply greedy, preferring the pain of his “symptoms” to that of consciously relinquishing something he wants.

-Thomas Szasz, Heresies

 

 

Psychiatric Dehumanization

Animalism is the opposite of humanism. It is treating man as though he were an animal. Science, medicine, and especially psychiatry are often guilty of animalizing man. The theory and practice of conventional psychiatry are, at bottom, the expressions of this tendency. Mental illness is a distinctly human affair. But the more we in­sist that it is an “illness”-and the more we prove this by producing “experimental neuroses” in animals and by curing human neuroses by means of drugs and shocks and surgery-the more we bestialize, animalize man. Having reduced him to the level of animal, we expect him to act like one-unconcerned about past failures, misdeeds, and wasted opportunities and heedless of the future; in short, unreflective and “happy” – a veritable anti-Socrates.

– Thomas Szasz, Heresies

What Do You Do with a Problem? An Existential Approach to Problems in Living

I came across an incredible children’s book called, What Do You Do With A Problem. I found it to be one of the best explanations of the existential approach to problems in life. The story touches on some existential themes such as anxiety, depression, isolation, freedom, and responsibility.

The Economics of Szasz: Preferences, Constraints, and Mental Illness

In the paper, The Economics of Szasz: Preferences, Constraints, and Mental Illness, Bryan Caplan summarizes Thomas Szasz’s views on mental illness and translates them into the language of economics. Caplan is an economist with a wide variety of interests. He is an interesting writer, thinker, and regularly provokes conversation on Twitter and his blog. Caplan won the Thomas Szasz Award in 2005 for the above-mentioned article. Caplan mentions on his blog that having a conversation with Szasz was a “highlight of my intellectual life“.

Jungian Therapy for Psychosis | George Mecouch

I found the interview below with George Mecouch and Will Hall of Madness Radio very interesting. The author George Mecouch emphasizes the spiritual aspect of human nature, something that the biological-reductive approach does not accept. Mecouch’s new book, While Psychiatry Slept: Reawakening Imagination in Therapy,  emphasizes that humans are storytelling, meaning making animals. Mecouch uses a Jungian perspective to help those struggling with psychosis.

Existential Therapy: Distinctive Features

The book, Existential Therapy: Distinctive Features by Emmy van Deurzen is a good reminder to view each person as a free individual, responsible for their life. But, on another level, the is a book about how to push a particular set of belief on another person.

Heresies | Thomas Szasz

The book Heresies by Thomas Szasz delivers insights into the human condition. Szasz’s insightful observations of human psychology never cease to inform.