Thomas Szasz, R. D. Laing, Peter Breggin

[Ligottian]

Anyone here read anything about these guys? They all have "alternative theories" about mental illness. What do you think?

 

[Ashu]

Szaz hated the mentally ill, Laing was mentally ill, and Peter Breggin has the effrontery to sermonize the mentally ill on how to live with mental states he can't even imagine. That's all I know about em. Fuck em all three.

 

[Green_leaf]

Szaz hated the mentally ill,

Really? I had read he was against the concept of mental illness, hence no mentally ill. Is there any book where that hatred becomes more manifest?

 

[Ligottian]

Hey guys. Go to youtube and look up Schizophenia Documentary -Gerald. It's in two parts....There but for fortune. Comments welcome.

 

[Warlord's Pulse]

Anyone here read anything about these guys? They all have "alternative theories" about mental illness. What do you think?

I've just met Szasz's work and it got my attention, as I've been a long term "mental health formal institutes" skeptical, didn't read any of his books yet though
Actually, I tried to read some of his critics first, as I almost always do (read the counterpart, generally mutually exclusive idea, if it doesn't make sense I have more confidence to follow through the original idea) and... yeah it doesn't look like it made sense to me, most likely some straw man fallacy
What bothers me is that "antipsychiatry" in general is very underdebated, most of "underdebated" concepts are underdebated exactly for the reason it doesn't need to, because it's just some kind of lunnacy, already debunked idea or some form of irony/humorous hypothesis (eg: flat Earth)

 

[Nightfoot]

I did a class presentation on Szas several years ago and it seemed like he had an axe to grind, so I wasn't sure how seriously to take him.