Books by Thomas Szasz

A defence of every individual's right to choose a voluntary death. The book contributes to the debates surrounding a significant ethical question facing our society: the right to suicide; physician-assisted suicide; psychiatric intervention for suicidal patients; and euthanasia.

The human mind abhors the absence of explanation, but full understanding is never possible

Understanding the history of psychiatry requires an accurate view of its function and purpose

A study of the history and present state of psychiatry. It compares the oppression of the slave by the master with that of the mental patient by the psychiatrist - one defining domination as liberation from the shackles of ignorance, the other as liberation from the shackles of mental illness.

.In Our Right to Drugs, Thomas Szasz shows that our present drug war started at the beginning of this century, when the American government first assumed the task of protecting people from patent medicines.

A compendium of thoughts, observations and aphorisms that address our understanding of a broad range of subjects, from birth to death. Thomas Szasz tackles a problem intrinsic to the human condition: the problem of people knowing much that "ain't so".

Challenges conventional beliefs about psychiatry. The author asserts that, in fact, psychiatrists are not concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of bona fide illnesses. Psychiatric tradition, social expectation, and the law make it clear that coercion is the profession's determining characteristic.

Looks at how Virginia Woolf, as well as her husband Leonard, used the concept of madness and the profession of psychiatry to manage and manipulate their own and each other's lives. The author interprets Virginia Woolf's life and work as expressions of her character, and her character as the "product" of her free will.

In this brilliantly original and highly accessible work, Thomas Szasz demonstrates the futility of analyzing the mind as a collection of brain functions.