Checking Szasz quotes
July 6, 2021 52 Comments
In previous posts I checked Ayn Rand quotes from Robert Mayhew and quotes in a Karl Popper book. In this post I am checking a couple of quotes from Thomas Szasz.
The first quote comes from p. 58 of Cruel Compassion:
Among the major advantages of separate care for the epileptics in colonies are the following: The model colony provides the patient with an environment from which many of the dangers he faces in normal community life, as well as stresses injurious to his mental health, are eliminated. … It relieves society in some measure of a source of potential danger to the public safety, since certain types of epileptic seizures are often accompanied by homicidal impulses.
The quote comes from p. 383 of the 1949 edition of The Mentally Ill In America by Albert Deutsch. The original quote reads:
Among the major advantages of separate care for the epileptics in colonies are the following:
1. The model colony provides the patient with an environment from which many of the dangers he faces in normal community life, as well as stresses injurious to his mental health, are eliminated. It is planned as closely as possible along the pattern of normal community life, with features adapted to his individual needs.
2. It provides him with constant medical care and supervision.
3. It relieves society in some measure of a source of potential danger to the public safety, since certain types of epileptic seizures are often accompanied by homicidal impulses.
4. It removes the patient from a general institution where he is forced into close contact with various groups of dependents (the mentally ill and defective, etc.) under conditions highly unsatisfactory to himself and his fellow-patients or fellow-inmates.
Szasz left out the numbers without indicating that he left anything out and squashed all of the quotes into a single paragraph but the quote is correct otherwise.
On p. 124 of Cruel Compassion, Szasz writes the following quote:
This investigation uses the method recently designated as the “psychological.” The name is applied because the theory takes its point of departure from within, from the mind of the economic man. I myself once spoke of economic theory in this sense as applied psychology.
The original quote comes from Social Economics by Friedrich von Wieser and it reads:
This investigation uses the method recently designated as the “psychological.” The name is applied because the theory takes its point of departure from within, from the mind of the economic man. I myself once spoke of economic theory in this sense as applied psychology.
The final quote I will check comes from p. 107 of Coercion as Cure by Thomas Szasz:
In carrying out my general plan of treatment it is my habit to ask the patient to remain in bed from six weeks to two months. At first, and in some cases for four or five weeks, I do not permit the patient to sit up or to sew or write or read. The only action allowed is that needed to clean the teeth. In some instances I have not permitted the patient to turn over without aid, and this I have done because sometimes I think no motion desirable, and because some- times the moral influence of absolute repose is of use. In such cases I arrange to have the bowels and water passed while lying down…Usually, after a fortnight I permit the patient to be read to—one to three hours a day—but I am daily amazed to see how kindly nervous and amemic women take to this absolute rest, and how little they complain of its monotony…All the moral uses of rest and isolation and change of habits are not obtained by merely insisting on the physical conditions needed to effect these ends. If the physician has the force of character required to secure the confidence and respect of his patients he has also much more in his power, and should have the tact to seize the proper occasions to direct the thoughts of his patients to the lapse from duties to others, and to the selfishness which a life of invalidism is apt to bring about. Such moral medication belongs to the higher sphere of the doctor’s duties, and if he means to cure his patient permanently, he cannot afford to neglect them.
The original quote comes from pp. 43-46 of Fat and Blood by Mitchell Silas Weir and it reads:
I have, of course, made use of every grade of rest for my patients, from insisting upon repose on a lounge for some hours a day up to entire rest in bed. In carrying out my general plan of treatment it is my habit to ask the patient to remain in bed from six weeks to two months. At first, and in some cases for four or five weeks, I do not permit the patient to sit up or to sew or write or read. The only action allowed is that needed to clean the teeth. In some instances I have not permitted the patient to turn over without aid, and this I have done because sometimes I think no motion desirable, and because some- times the moral influence of absolute repose is of use. In such cases I arrange to have the bowels and water passed while lying down, and the patient is lifted on to a lounge at bedtime and sponged, and then lifted back again into the newly-made bed.
In all cases of weakness, treated by rest, I insist on the patient being fed by the nurse, and, when well enough to sit up in bed, I insist that the meats shall be cut up, so as to make it easier for the patient to feed herself.
In many cases I allow the patient to sit up in order to obey the calls of nature, but I am always careful to have the bowels kept reasonably free from costiveness, knowing well how such a state and the efforts it gives rise to enfeeble a sick person.
Usually, after a fortnight I permit the patient to be read to,—one to three hours a day,—but I am daily amazed to see how kindly nervous and amemic women take to this absolute rest, and how little they complain of its monotony. In fact, the use of massage and the battery, with the frequent comings of the nurse with food and the doctor’s visits, seem so to fill up the day as to make the treatment less tiresome than might be supposed. And, besides this, the sense of comfort which is apt to come about the fifth or sixth day,—the feeling of ease, and the ready capacity to digest food, and the growing hope of final cure, fed as it is by present relief,—all conspire to make most patients contented and tractable.
The moral uses of enforced rest are readily estimated. From a restless life of irregular hours, and probably endless drugging, from hurtful sympathy and over-zealous care, the patient passes to an atmosphere of quiet, to order and control, to the system and care of a thorough nurse, to an absence of drugs, and to simple diet. The result is always at first, whatever it may be afterwards, a sense of relief, and a remarkable and often a quite abrupt disappearance of many of the nervous symptoms with which we are all of us only too sadly familiar.
All the moral uses of rest and isolation and change of habits are not obtained by merely insisting on the physical conditions needed to effect these ends. If the physician has the force of character required to secure the confidence and respect of his patients he has also much more in his power, and should have the tact to seize the proper occasions to direct the thoughts of his patients to the lapse from duties to others, and to the selfishness which a life of invalidism is apt to bring about. Such moral medication belongs to the higher sphere of the doctor’s duties, and if he means to cure his patient permanently, he cannot afford to neglect them.
Szasz’s book squashed material from several pages and paragraphs into one paragraph and changed some of the punctuation in the original from “,-” to “-” but the quote is the same otherwise.