steven wrote:

> Over on his blog 'A Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land,' Scott Neigh
> reviews two of Szasz's recent books

He's on the right track, and he does a fair job of representing Szasz's
views. He rather reminds me of the six-year-old who has discovered that
Santa Claus doesn't exist, but wants to hang his stocking by the chimney
anyway.

For instance, he says:
'I don't agree with him, though, that there is no reason to modulate our
understandings of human agency based on an individual's experiences of
extreme mental anguish, though I have no easy, reliable, "objective" way
to do that, and I am skeptical of current approaches.'

If he is 'skeptical of current approaches' and doesn't have an 'easy,
reliable, "objective"' alternative to those approaches, then on what is
he basing his 'understandings of human agency'?

He is further most reluctant to let go of his leftist identity, based on
vaguities like:
'I don't think that "social" has to mean "state"'.
That is exactly what it means in the word 'socialism'. Szasz has never
opposed any form of social intercourse which is free of state coercion.

Then he goes on to repeat the typical socialist rhetoric:
'poor health outcomes that are largely socially produced.'
Health is a poorly defined concept, but surely it is not as simple as
that. Myriad factors contribute to good and ill health. Socialists
usually mean that poverty produces ill health. This is equating health
to access to medical services. While such access can in certain
circumstances be life-saving, it overlooks the detriment to health by
overconsumption of medical services, and the importance of non-medical
services to health such as sufficient food, clean water, safe homes, and
practical assistance for those who cannot care for themselves.

I tend to agree with him on that it would be "more powerful to look at
efficacy/impacts". I think the reasons Szasz doesn't do this much may be
because
a. His arguments are ideological; and
b. Illustrating inefficacy requires leaning on statistics, and such
statistics, even when available, are never reliable.

Another socialist cliché he repeats is:
'oppressive and exploitative social relations beyond the state'.
Of course there can be such relations in families, churches, schools,
businesses, ball clubs, and all other social groups, but the point is
that adults have the freedom to leave these groups if they don't like
what's going on, whereas there is no freedom to leave the state.
Rightists say "love it or leave it" but there are currently no non-state
alternatives.

He states that it is a "mistaken idea that the capitalist market is
actually free". Here we suffer from lack of definition. To me capitalism
by definition is freedom. Those parts of the market that are not free,
are also not capitalist. Perhaps the freest markets are the illegal
ones, because they are the only ones that escape regulation and taxation.

Further he states, 'you can't understand human behaviour, and you can't
evaluate it in ways that are ethically and politically meaningful' with
which I agree. That's the whole point. It's not the state's role to
understand or evaluate human behavior. Its role is to protect our freedoms.

He is right that "the kinds of knowledge informing the practices of
doctors and the imbalanced power between doctor and patient ... have a
lot of oppressive consequences in our experiences of healthcare". This
is in fact true in state health care systems as well as alternative,
non-state regulated systems. As long as A can be persuaded to believe
that B possesses important, life-saving information that A does not, B
can keep A under his thumb. The solution i.m.o. is not socialist
medicine, which makes this phenomenon even worse, but medical education
for everybody instead of a select, state-sanctioned few. I won't diverge
into my views on libertarian education here.

He then poses, "One of the ways in which biological psychiatry has used
this simplistic misunderstanding of the connection between complex human
behaviours and biology is to dismiss the value of actually engaging with
people who are in mental anguish as subjects." So what does he want, for
the state to engage with me when I'm in mental anguish? The state is not
about engaging, it is about controlling. Likewise he states 'Certainly I
agree with him that the kinds of responses that are based in control
rather than empowerment and support are things we should oppose.' How is
the state or a socialist health care system going to empower and support
me? It cannot do that, it can only control and limit me.

Then he calls for what Szasz calls "prettifying the plantations":
'much of the time importing the disease-model for experiences of mental
anguish is destructive and we need new vocabulary, new concepts, new
approaches.'
That's like saying, now that we know he doesn't exist, we should stop
calling him Santa Claus and call him St. Nick instead.

I agree that 'people /do/ experience things going on inside of them that
are unpleasant, that they do not want, and that they wish outside
assistance to get rid of, even if we don't call it "mental illness."'
And I'm sure that Szasz does too. The question is, where is this outside
assistance to come from? As a matter of fact, the unpleasantness inside
of me may well be dissipated, at least temporarily, when Santa Claus
laughs heartily and brings me presents.

Mira