Daily Archives: 22/05/2013

Psychiatrists Can Do What No Other Medical Specialists Can Do

Anti-Coercion Is Not Anti-Psychiatry MAY 01, 2008 by THOMAS S. SZASZ The term “anti-psychiatry” was created in 1967 by the South African psychiatrist David Cooper (1931–1986) and the Scottish psychiatrist Ronald David Laing (1927–1989). Instead of defining the term, they identified it as follows: “We have had many pipe-dreams about the ideal psychiatric, or rather anti-psychiatric, […]

Why Psychiatry Should Be Abolished as a Medical Specialty

by Lawrence Stevens, J.D. Psychiatry should be abolished as a medical specialty because medical school education is not needed nor even helpful for doing counselling or so-called psychotherapy, because the perception of mental illness as a biological entity is mistaken, because psychiatry’s “treatments” other than counselling or psychotherapy (primarily drugs and electroshock) hurt rather than help […]

The Case Against Psychotherapy

The Case Against Psychotherapy by Lawrence Stevens, J.D. “What we need are more kindly friends and fewer professionals.” – Jeffrey Masson, Ph.D., his book Against Therapy (Atheneum, 1988, p. XV) The best person to talk with about your problems in life usually is a good friend.  It has been said, “Therapists are expensive friends.”  Likewise, friends are inexpensive “therapists”.  […]

antipsychiatry

Controversy has often surrounded psychiatry,[1] and the anti-psychiatry message is that psychiatric treatments are ultimately more damaging than helpful to patients. Psychiatry is thought by some to be a benign medical practice, but at times is seen as a coercive instrument of oppression. Psychiatry is seen to involve an unequal power relationship between doctor and patient, and a highly subjective diagnostic […]