Martin,
 
What if person gets hit in head and can no longer make appropriate decisions? As
a result, they killpeople, etc? What should we do?
 
D

--- On Sun, 8/17/08, Martin Kessler <titaniummdk@...> wrote:

From: Martin Kessler <titaniummdk@...>
Subject: RE: [ThomasSzaszDiscussion] Man kills mother -- whose at fault?
To: thomasszaszdiscussion@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sunday, August 17, 2008, 6:42 PM







Hi Matt, From what you have written I gather that the journalist and the
advocates accepted the diagnosis of schizophrenia for William Bruce. Szasz
believes in personal responsibility and holds a person responsible for their
acts which have reasons. For this case, William Bruce had reasons for his
actions which were not articulated because journalists and others involved who
have accepted the diagnosis of schizophrenia disregard what the "patient" says
as "word salad". Now William Bruce may have articulated clearly why he did what
he did or he may have kept it to himself. Is it possible that the what his
parents did to him by placing him in a prison called a mental hospital may have
been reason to commit a murder? Anyway I'm agreement with you, Mr. Bruce should
not have been exculpated and is a benificiary of the insanity defense.

Martin

To: thomasszaszdiscussi on@yahoogroups. comFrom: dio@...: Sun, 17 Aug
2008 05:38:33 +0900Subject: [ThomasSzaszDiscuss ion] Man kills mother -- whose
at fault?

The WSJ today has a page one article discussing the case of a man, William
Bruce, who murdered his wife. Clearly in the mind of the authors who write the
article, the responsibility for the murder falls not on William Bruce, but an
advocacy group that pushed to have him released from commitment:Title: A Death
in the FamilyAided by advocates for the mentally ill,William Bruce left the
hospital -- only to kill his motherAuthors: ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN and NATHAN
KOPPELLink:http://tinyurl. com/5f5fewSadly, that is tragically, the article
reads like a comedy of errors. Some scattered thoughts.1. William Bruce is
labeled "schizophrenic" but its never clear why. I state this because when I
read things like this, I want to immediately know if the person has either:a)
attempted suicideorb) broken laws such that he should be in jail and not an
institution for the mentally ill.In this case, we're given little information.
The article does suggest that William Bruce
tried to commit suicide when he was 14, after which he was medicated. He
performed violent acts at home, putting his mother in a head lock, punching his
father in the face. He was finally forced into an institution after he
threatened two men with a loaded AK-47 rifle. He was clearly saying violent
things, probably issuing threats, prior to the murder of his mother.2. The
advocates who helped William Bruce get released were funded by the government
and encouraged the man to lie. None of them were physicians. According to an
accompanying video, some of them did not believe mental illness existed.3. The
point of the article, which is heavily biased, is best articulated here:-------
------Some doctors, hospital administrators and mental-health veterans argue
that advocates are endangering the mentally ill and the public by too often
fighting for patients' right to refuse treatment. Many advocates "have a strong
bias," says Robert Liberman, a director of a
psychiatric rehabilitation program at the University of California, Los
Angeles."--- --------- -Okay, for example, we could *simplistically* say people
like that Szasz are the real danger here, because they motivate these advocates,
and dangerous but needy people go free. However, clearly this would be false for
anyone paying close attention. The advocates were funded by the government, they
encouraged lying, they interfered in an intrusive manner, they probably don't
want the legal system to act against people like William Bruce when it will go
against them ... I mean, I can't put my finger on it precisely, but these
advocates don't seem anything even remotely similar to Szasz or those who hold
similar views to Szasz. The article makes clear some of the advocates actually
*did* believe in mental illness.4. The article notes:------ -----In recent
years, there has been a wave of legislative efforts, many inspired by violent
crimes, to make it easier to
mandate treatment for the mentally ill. Advocates have blunted those efforts in
California, New Mexico and Michigan.--- -------This is interesting. The problem
is with the very concept of mental illness. Not unexpectedly this is never
addressed in the article.5. Just prior to William Bruce's murder of his mother,
after the advocates had helped secure his release, the article notes:------
-----William was soon back home. He hid steak and butcher knives in his bedroom
and spent hours pacing in the driveway, giggling and babbling unintelligibly to
himself. Joe began calling to check on his wife several times a day. "It was the
worst we'd ever seen him," he [his father] says.------- -----This is sad and
tragic. The lack of response to this obviously odious and scary behavior on the
family's part is probably due to two things:a. They genuinely loved their son
and wanted to help him. Perhaps they couldn't believe he could actually harm
them.b. They felt he
was mentally ill and could be healed.Although it would have been unimaginably
hard for the family, they could have thrown him out of their home and even got a
restraining order if he continued to bother them. I don't know, but the family
clearly tolerated his behavior, when they shouldn't have. I guess they felt the
only *out* they had was labeling him mentally ill, and when this didn't pan out,
they felt there was nothing else they could do. How tragic.I do think that
William Bruce should be in jail for what he did. Instead, he's wearing a suit
and sipping coffee while he grants an interview to the WSJ and blames his
actions (murdering his mother) on an advocacy group.-- Matt Dioguardi

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