Reviews for Psychotherapy in the Age of Accountability

The average rating for Psychotherapy in the Age of Accountability based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-11-29 00:00:00 Tracy Reed Szasz's first book was The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct. The title of that first work adumbrates the main points of Szasz's later work. He believes that mental patients should not face coercive treatment, involuntary commitment, or involuntary medication unless and until they have committed a criminal offense. Let me rephrase that--his beef is even bigger. Coercive psychiatry is a contradiction in terms to Szasz, and those criminal issues are best dealt with through the criminal law system. "Replacing the practice of committing persons as mental patients with the practice of treating them as responsible persons would require a ... metamorphosis of professional and popular opinion. People would have to accept that involuntary mental hospitalization is counterproductive, because it deprives the subject of dignity and and liberty, excuses him from responsibility for his behavior, and prevents him from learning by suffering the consequences of his selfish or unwise actions; and they would have to conclude that the relationship between sane family members and their insane relatives--or between the state and certain violators--could be better regulated by means of regular criminal and civil law sanctions than by special mental health law procedures." Szasz in this book sketches the history of mental illness and the social rules governing the unwanted or inconvenient members of society and shows how in fact the two have converged. Also notable is the way that psychiatry got things wrong--really wrong--in the not-so-distant past. The low point might be the assumptions about and isolation of epileptics until the 1950s. Or, Szasz might argue, it might be the present. While there have been many changes in mental health policy since Szasz began to speak out in the 1950s, he argues those changes really haven't been improvements, because they still don't deal with the core flaws in our philosophy--the trampling of the twin virtues of personal liberty and personal responsibility in our dealings with the so-called mentally ill. A brilliant rhetorician, Szasz often explores the semantics behind the world views we take for granted. He conducts in this book a profound and probing discussion, for instance, about the meaning of the word "home" as a means to understand the problem of "homelessness" and its possible solutions. He also builds an argument equating child psychiatry with child rape, based on the child inability to give consent to treatment. Szasz strongly believes in the power of psychiatry to solve life problems--when it is practiced between a consenting adult and his therapist. This book, coming later in his career, is a bit more apologetic (in a rhetorical sense) than some in its predecessors. There were also a couple of times when his use of commas invoked the sonnets of John Donne. Neither of these stylistic issues dampened my experience with the book. Szasz is a key libertarian thinker of the Twentieth Century, and this book would be a great one to get your feet wet in Szasz, as it ranges over history,economics, criminal justice, mental illness, homelessness, and more. I think one of his more striking observations is how often otherwise libertarian authors have nearly universally taken for granted the need for the use of coercion against the mentally ill. Personal disclosure: The diagnosis of schizophrenia is a common one in my immediate and extended family. I lived with a schizophrenic relative for years. So please don't hate on me because you think I live in an ivory tower with respect to mental illness. From time to time an author comes along like an earthquake and tries to reshape the cultural landscape and allow us to see our cultural prejudices and blind spots. Szasz is one such author. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek brought a microscope to water and showed us worlds unimagined. Szasz brings the microscope to bear on mental illness. Maybe everything we have been conditioned to believe about mental illness and its treatment isn't the last word? There is something to make everyone uncomfortable in this book. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. Oh and as noted I do own a copy I can loan you if you're local.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-02-21 00:00:00 Karen Dirkson immediately disliked. Apparently it was meant for a classroom setting. A classroom of less than brilliant students at that.