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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.

Thomas Szasz

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Thomas Szasz
Age: 92 †
Born: 1920
Born: April 15
Died: 2012
Died: September 8
Academic
Human Rights Activist
Psychiatrist
University Teacher
Writer
Buda Pest
Way
Concepts
Physical
Bipolar
Exist
Theoretical
Objects
Hence
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Literally
Courses
Illness
Course
Object
Thing
Mental

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Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.
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Suicide is a fundamental human right. This does not mean that it is desirable. It only means that society does not have the moral right to interfere, by force, with a persons decision to commit this act. The result is a far-reaching infantilization and dehumanization of the suicidal person.
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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.
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The passion to interpret as madness that with which we disagree seems to have infected the best of contemporary minds.
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A person cannot make another happy, but he can make him unhappy. This is the main reason why there is more unhappiness than happiness in the world.
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The Nazis spoke of having a Jewish problem. We now speak of having a drug-abuse problem. Actually, Jewish problem was the name the Germans gave to their persecution of the Jews drug-abuse problem is the name we give to the persecution of people who use certain drugs.
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We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility
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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.
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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.
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Men often treat others worse than they treat themselves, but they rarely treat anyone better. It is the height of folly to expect consideration and decency from a person who mistreats himself.
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When a man says that he is Jesus or Napoleon, or that the Martians are after him, or claims something else that seems outrageous to common sense, he is labeled psychotic and locked up in a madhouse. Freedom of speech is only for normal people.
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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.
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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.
Thomas Szasz
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Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people. In the United States today, opiates are the religion of the people.
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The many faces of intimacy: the Victorians could experience it through correspondence, but not through cohabitation contemporary men and women can experience it through fornication, but not through friendship.
Thomas Szasz
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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.
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He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself.
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Men love liberty because it protects them from control and humiliation by others, thus affording them the possibility of dignity they loathe liberty because it throws them back on their own abilities and resources, thus confronting them with the possibility of insignificance.
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If you talk to God, you are praying If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
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Involuntary mental hospitalization is like slavery. Refining the standards for commitment is like prettifying the slave plantations. The problem is not how to improve commitment, but how to abolish it
Thomas Szasz