Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T06:56:59.939Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

1. Psychiatric Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Thomas Szasz
Thomas Szasz*
Affiliation:
SUNY Health Science Center, Syracuse, NY 13210, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is now widely accepted, especially in the United States, that confining lawbreakers in mental hospitals as insane, without the benefit of a real trial, rather in prisons as criminals, after a proper trial, is a recent, enlightened Western practice. Nothing could be further from the truth. The practice is not recent, enlightened, or typically Western – resembling the Oriental despotic arbitrariness towards troublesome persons much more closely than the Occidental legal respect towards persons accused of crimes. Many 19th-century cases illustrate the procedure and support my foregoing interpretation of it. The following is a typical example.

Type
Points of View
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 154 , Issue 6 , June 1989 , pp. 864 - 869
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1989 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Black, H. C. (1968) Black's Law Dictionary. St Paul, Minnesota: West.Google Scholar
De Jonge, A. (1982) The Life and Times of Grigorii Rasputin. New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan.Google Scholar
Fuller Torrey, E. (1988) Homelessness and mental illness. USA Today, March, 26–27.Google Scholar
Lancet (1988) Human rights abuse in mental hospitals. Lancet, i 953–954.Google Scholar
Minor-Harper, S. & Innes, C. A. (1987) Time served in prison and on parole, 1984. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, December. Washington, DC: US Bureau of Justice.Google Scholar
Smith, R. (1981) Trial by Medicine: Insanity and Responsibility in Victorian Trials. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Szamuely, T. (1974) The Russian Tradition (ed. Conquest, R.). New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Szasz, T. S. (1963) Law, Liberty, and Psychiatry: An Inquiry into the Social Uses of Mental Health Practices. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Szasz, T. S. (1984) The Therapeutic State: Psychiatry in the Mirror of Current Events. Buffalo: Prometheus Books.Google Scholar
Szasz, T. S. (1987) Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
West, D. J. & Walk, A. (1977) Daniel McNaughton: His Trial and the Aftermath. London: Gaskell.Google Scholar
Wittfogel, K. A. (1957) Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.