A Quote by Thomas Szasz

Mental illness is a myth, whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations.

Thomas Szasz

Quote Topics

Bitter Conflicts Disguise Function Human Human Relations Illness Mental Mental Illness Moral More Myth Pill Relations Render Thus Whose

Quote Author

Thomas Szasz
American - Psychologist
April 15, 1920 - September 8, 2012

The very term ['mental disease'] is nonsensical, a semantic mistake. The two words cannot go together except metaphorically; you can no more have a mental 'disease' than you can have a purple idea or a wise space". Similarly, there can no more be a "mental illness" than there can be a "moral illness." The words "mental" and "illness" do not go together logically. Mental "illness" does not exist, and neither does mental "health." These terms indicate only approval or disapproval of some aspect of a person's mentality (thinking, emotions, or behavior).

E. Fuller Torrey

Mental illness is so much more complicated than any pill that any mortal could invent

Elizabeth Wurtzel

Symbols are specific acts or figures, while myths develop and elaborate these symbols into a story which contains characters and several episodes. The myth is thus more inclusive. But both symbol and myth have the same function psychologically; they are man's way of expressing the quintessence of his experience - his way of seeing his life, his self-image and his relations to the world of his fellow men and of nature - in a total figure which at the same moment carries the vital meaning of this experience.

Rollo May

I have spent most of my life working with mental illness. I have been president of the world's largest association of mental-illness workers, and I am all for more funding for mental-health care and research - but not in the vain hope that it will curb violence.

Martin Seligman

Advocates of psychiatric drugs often claim that the medications improve learning and the ability to benefit from psychotherapy, but the contrary is true. There are no drugs that improve mental function, self-understanding, or human relations. Any drug that affects mental processes does so by impairing them.

Peter Breggin

People with what we call mental illness can indeed serve well, and people who have no discernible mental illness - and that may be true of Trump - may not be able to serve, may be quite unfit. So it isn't always the question of a psychiatric diagnosis. It's really a question of what psychological and other traits render one unfit or dangerous.

Robert Jay Lifton

In fact, people with mental illness are more likely to be the victims of violence rather than anything else. So it's important that we not stereotype folks with mental illness.

Vivek Murthy

In later years, when I started working in police ethics, I was professionally drawn back to the topic but as well was better able to see two sides to loyalty - its importance for certain central human relations such as friendships, but also its corruptibility in the sense that loyalty could be invoked against other moral constraints: it sometimes function as something of a moral Trojan horse, undermining other moral considerations.

John Kleinig

Mental illness is a disease and organic mental illness of young kids is becoming more and more of a disease... we do need to talk about it.

Lisa Gardner

Privatization is a bitter pill but it is a pill that will cure.

Frederick Chiluba

Wanting to be on television is a mental illness. Wanting to be president of the United States, wanting to be an actor - these are degrees of the same mental illness. If you need to be approved of simultaneously by more people than are in this room now, there's a problem.

Keith Olbermann

Science cannot resolve moral conflicts, but it can help to more accurately frame the debates about those conflicts.

Heinz Pagels

Mental illness is no myth, as some have claimed. It is a disturbance in our sense of possession of a stable inner self that survives its personae.

Camille Paglia

I have an illness. I have a mental illness. I've accepted that now. Before, I used to beat myself up all the time, but the more you talk about it, the more it takes the power out of it.

Paul Merson

Having a mental illness does not mean you're weak or can't handle life. You can have a mental illness and deal with it and still be a powerful, confident woman.