The British Journal of Psychiatry (2003) 183: 77-78
© 2003 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Slavery and psychiatry
J. A. Schaler
Department of Justice, Law and Society, School of Public Affairs,
American University, Ward Circle Building, 4400 Mass. Ave., NW, Washington, DC
20016–8043, USA
EDITED BY STANLEY ZAMMIT
Raj Persaud (2003) begins
his review of Thomas Szasz’s book Liberation by Oppression: A
Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry by asserting that something
false is true: ‘Thomas Szasz became famous for being at the vanguard of
the anti-psychiatry movement’. First, Szasz has never been part of the
anti-psychiatry movement, much less at the vanguard of it. Second, there is as
much truth in Persaud’s assertion as there is in asserting that the
Nazis were simply practising medicine. Szasz has made it absolutely clear for
over 50 years now that he supports psychiatry between consenting adults, that
is, he supports contractual psychiatry. Third, Dr Persaud then asserts that
Szasz is an ‘ally rather than an enemy of the National Health Service
general adult psychiatrist’. This is another fiction masquerading as
fact. Szasz is not an ally of National Health Service psychiatrists, none of
whom, to my knowledge, has denounced or renounced the practice of psychiatric
slavery. Moreover, Szasz is a classical liberal, not a socialist. The two
cardinal principles of the classical liberal credo are the affirmation of the
right to bodily and mental self-ownership and the prohibition against
initiating violence.
These rather serious misrepresentations aside, Persaud ignores the core
ideas in Szasz’s book. Institutional psychiatry is an extension of law:
institutional psychiatrists are agents of the state, not of their patients.
Doctors who practise contractual medicine are agents of their patients, not of
the state. The importance of this difference cannot be overemphasised.
People labelled by institutional psychiatrists as mentally ill are
concurrently defined by the courts as less than human, in much the same way
‘Negroes’ in America were once defined as three-fifths persons.
This is how Black people were, and people with mental illnesses are, deprived
of liberty and justice by the state. Labelling of anyone as less than human is
legal fiction, something false that is asserted as true, that the courts will
not allow to be disproved. Just as defining Negroes as three-fifths persons
served to maintain the institution of slavery, defining people as mentally ill
serves to maintain the institution of psychiatry.
A person has a right to refuse treatment for cancer. A person does not have
a right to refuse treatment for mental illness. If institutional psychiatrists
are deprived of their power by the state to deprive mentally ill persons of
their liberty, that is, if the state did not allow psychiatrists to enslave
their patients in the name of liberating them, institutional psychiatry would
go the way of slavery, as well it should.
REFERENCES
Persaud, R. (2003) Book review: Liberation
by Oppression (T. Szasz). British Journal of
Psychiatry, 182,
273.[Free Full Text]
