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This vividly well-written, painstakingly and pointedly researched volume is, perhaps, Szasz's magnum opus, a culmination of the critical thinking and spirited argument that continue to earn him a reputation as antipsychiatrist, partly warranted and partly refutable. Szasz's avowed goal in this book is “to present a critical exposition of the idea of mental illness and its consequences” first in relation to bodily illness, patient role, and crime; second, by connecting mental illness with imitation, intention, and responsibility; and third, “by articulating the practical uses of the idea of mental illness, especially as a rhetorical device for interpersonal control and social policy, and as an essential element in contemporary explanations of human behavior.” He goes about his task with gusto and conviction, fervently and quasi-religiously, exposing the implicit analogic logic regarding bodily illness and mental illness, and, occasionally making use of such method in his own exposé.
Szasz views mental illness as a metaphorical concept. His potentially precious and limiting definition of real or bodily disease as comprised of “abnormal bodies, organs, tissues, cells, and pathological processes” leads him to view critically the not yet sufficiently demonstrated claims to brain disease as a substratum for mental illness. The metaphorical use is further criticized for gathering many improprieties and for failing to establish any precise criteria for the definition of mental illness. Such a concept, he believes, tends to “psychiatrize” any and all kinds of behavior that are considered objectionable at any given time or place, thus rendering them liable to control by the psychiatrist who is empowered to act as a social agent. This he sees as detrimental to society as well as to the individual because it diminishes personal responsibility for moral conflict and for choices in dealing with the latter. Recurrently, he asks the question for whose good is the whole idea and atte